ROME, 01 FEB – Actor Alec Baldwin was on the phone with his family during firearms training for the filming of the film ‘Rust’, in which he shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. This is the accusation of the Santa Fe prosecutors, who today formally indicted him with manslaughter together with armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Baldwin was “distracted” by talking to family members on his cell phone during training on how to use the stage gun, wrote Robert Shilling, a special investigator with the district attorney’s office, in a statement about the probable cause of the accident. Had the actor gone through the mandatory security checks with gunsmith Hannah and not pointed the gun at Hutchins, the “tragedy would not have happened,” Shilling argued. “This reckless deviation from known standards, practice and protocol directly caused the fatal shooting,” he said. “Baldwin knew that the first rule of gun safety is never point a gun at someone you don’t intend to shoot,” he added (ANSA).
(ANSA)