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Movie set in New Mexico
Photo: ADRIA MALCOLM / REUTERS
After the death on the set of the western film "Rust", an assistant director is increasingly the focus of the investigation.
Now, according to the police, he has admitted an error when checking the film weapon.
Actor Alec Baldwin apparently accidentally shot camerawoman Halyna Hutchins while filming last week when he fired the gun during a rehearsal.
The 42-year-old died in hospital shortly after the incident.
Director Joel Souza was hit in the shoulder and injured.
Assistant director Dave Halls said he had not checked all the bullets in the revolver's drum, according to an interrogation protocol released on Wednesday.
There was apparently live ammunition in the weapon.
According to the police, Hutchins was killed by a "lead projectile".
Halls had handed Baldwin the Colt .45 before the fatal shot last week and spoke of a "cold gun."
This means a firearm that does not contain live ammunition and is therefore safe.
The assistant director had apparently not checked the weapon sufficiently.
"He could only remember seeing three bullets," writes an investigator in the interrogation protocol submitted to the court.
"He said he should have checked them all, but he didn't, and couldn't remember if she (Gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed) was turning the drum."
How did the bullet get into the gun?
Sheriff Adan Mendoza said at a press conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico on Wednesday, that the revolver appeared to have a real bullet in it.
Accordingly, a lead projectile was found in Souza's shoulder - presumably the same projectile that killed Hutchins and then hit the director standing behind her.
Further investigations should provide more details.
It is unclear how live ammunition got into the Colt.
On the film set, the police seized 500 bullets, a "mixture" of blank cartridges, dummy cartridges and probably also real bullets, as Sheriff Mendoza said.
"We'll find out how the real bullets got there, why they were there, because they shouldn't have been there." Apparently there was a certain "carelessness" on the film set.
Gunsmith Gutierrez-Reed told investigators, according to the interrogation protocol, that she had stored the guns on set in a safe during the lunch break before the accident, but not the ammunition.
Reports of target practice sessions on the set
The 24-year-old also stated that real bullets were "never" kept on the film set.
The industry website "The Wrap" had recently reported, however, that members of the film crew had only been practicing cans with props and live ammunition hours before the fatal incident.
So far, there have been no arrests or charges in the case.
The responsible prosecutor Mary Carmack-Altwies did not rule out possible criminal proceedings on Wednesday.
Legal experts consider it unlikely that Baldwin will face criminal consequences - even if consequences under civil law are possible, especially since Baldwin is also a producer.
According to media reports, the filming had already had security problems before the fatal incident.
It was also recently announced that Halls's assistant director had been fired from another production two years ago because of a gun accident.
jok / AFP