Alec Baldwin shooting: Santa Fe district attorney says criminal charges are ‘on the table’

District attorney says criminal charges would take ‘weeks, if not months’ in Rust film set shooting

The Santa Fe County district attorney has said criminal charges are possible in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust.

Mary Carmack-Altwies told The New York Times she “hadn’t ruled anything out” in an interview on Tuesday.

Ms Carmack-Altwies said investigators were focusing on ballistics to determine what kind of round had killed Hutchins and who had placed the ammunition in the gun.

She said a search warrant executed on the set of the Bonanza Creek Ranch found an “enormous amount of bullets on this set” as well as three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition.

“We need to find out what kinds they were,” she said.

Ms Carmack-Altwies, the county’s top prosecutor, said it was misleading to describe the weapon that killed Hutchins last Thursday as a “prop gun”.

“It was an antique-era appropriate gun,” she told The Times.

Alec Baldwin, an actor and producer on Rust, had been practising a “cross-draw” weapons firing technique and was aiming at a camera when the gun went off inside a church, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.

Alec Baldwin and Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust in the last known photograph before she was killed (Serge Svetnoy)

According to affidavits released by Santa Fe authorities, the gun had been placed on a cart outside the church by the movie’s armourer, and given to Baldwin by assistant director Dave Halls.

Halls said it was a “cold gun”, indicating it did not contain live rounds.

Since the incident, it has emerged that Halls had been sacked from a film in 2019 after a prop gun accidentally fired on the set of the movie Freedom’s Path, injuring a crew member.

The Santa De district attorney told The Times it would be “weeks, if not months, of follow-up investigation that we’re going to need to get to the point of charging”.

She said investigators were still conducting interviews with people on the set.

She was aware of reports that the gun involved in the shooting had been used for target practice prior to the fatal shooting, adding they remained “unconfirmed”.