Seconds after being shot by Alec Baldwin, cinematographer Halnya Hutchins told a boom operator on the “Rust” movie set, “That was no good. That was no good at all.” Hours later, she was pronounced dead.
The haunting final words of the 42-year-old mom, who had been working as the director of photography on Baldwin’s upcoming Western flick, were reported by the Los Angeles Times based on interviews with 14 crew members, emails and text messages.
A few moments earlier, Baldwin had been preparing for a shootout scene inside a church by making sure the camera crew got its angles right for the cross draw with the FD Pietta .45-caliber Colt revolver, the newspaper reported.
“So, I guess I’m gonna take this out, pull it and go, ‘Bang!’” he said as he gripped the holstered handgun, which was supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds, according to the report.
Instead, a live bullet flew out the barrel of the firearm, which the actor had been told was a “cold gun,” referring to a production term that means the weapon doesn’t contain live rounds and is safe for rehearsal, the LA Times said.
The mortally wounded Hutchins stumbled backward and fell into the arms of the chief electrician on set as blood poured out of her chest. Meanwhile, director Joel Souza, who was reportedly struck by the same round, also dropped to the ground.
“What the f— was that? That burns!” Souza yelled, the paper reported.
Baldwin put the gun down on a pew and repeatedly said, “What the f— just happened?”
“Medic!” someone shouted amid the pandemonium as crew members rushed to the stricken Hutchins. One of them, a boom operator, looked into her eyes and said, “Oh, that was no good,” the LA Times said.
“No, that was no good. That was no good at all,” she replied.
Within a few hours, she was pronounced dead.
On Saturday, Baldwin looked forlorn and haggard as he addressed the tragic shooting on Oct. 21 at the Bonanza Creek Ranch that sent shockwaves across the entertainment industry.
“There are incidental accidents on film sets from time to time, but nothing like this,” the 63-year-old actor told a reporter from BackGrid in Vermont. “This is a one-in-a-trillion episode, a one-in-a trillion event.”
Meanwhile, frustrated crew members told the LA Times that cost-cutting was prioritized over safety.
“It always felt like the budget was more important than crew members,” Lane Luper, the A-camera first assistant, told the paper. “Everything was about the schedule and the budget.”
Union members had even walked off the set hours before Baldwin, also a producer on the movie, fired the gun — citing “poor gun safety” as one of the reasons for the move, according to a text message obtained by The Post.
Crewmembers told the Times that there were three accidental discharges of weapons on the set before the fatal incident.
In one case, Baldwin’s stunt double accidentally fired a blank after being told his gun was “cold.” In another, a member of the props department “actually shot herself in the foot,” Luper said, adding that the round was a blank.
Jonas Huerta, a digital utility technician, said he often felt “anxious” during filming.
“I also feel anxious on set, I’ve seen firsthand our [assistant director] rush to get shots and he skips over important protocols,” Huerta reportedly said in the email to Walters obtained by the LA paper.
“He often rushes to shoot, I’ve had more than a few occasions where I have been close to the weapons being fired with no regards to my hearing. Sometimes he rushes so quickly that props [department] hasn’t even had the chance to bring earplugs and he rolls and the actors fire anyway,” he added, according to the report.
The assistant director, Dave Halls, reportedly handed Baldwin the gun that killed Hutchins — and insisted the weapon was a “cold gun,” according to a search warrant.
Halls later admitted to investigators that he thought he saw three rounds inside the gun, but he did not check them before taking the pistol, the Times said.
The gun was loaded by head armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Crewmembers had also expressed concerns over the 24-year-old’s lack of experience.
Katherine Walters, the unit production manager, believed that “apparently props and armor require handholding,” the Times reported, citing a screenshot of an internal Slack message from Oct. 8.
Even Baldwin himself was reportedly worried about safety.
“Alec was pretty concerned about safety on set,” a camera technician, who wanted to remain anonymous, said.
“He wanted to know where I would be standing when he drew his gun. I told him I was going to be standing in a different place, and he said, ‘Good.’”
In addition, crewmembers were concerned about a lack of a medic at the site during pre-production, which is standard protocol in the movie industry.
“Somebody dropped a countersink bit and it stabbed me in the hand. I had to take care of it myself and I’m still healing from it,” one person, who also asked to remain anonymous, told the Times, referring to an accident during construction of a hanging gallows. A rep for 3rd Shift Media, which was running the unit production, declined to comment to the newspaper.
Another crewmember described how they were “looking right at” Hutchins when she was struck.
“I was looking right at her, I could see an exit wound that immediately started pouring blood and that’s when [people screamed] ‘She’s shot!’ and everything went crazy,” the told the paper.
Script supervisor Mamie Mitchell ran outside to call 911.
“Bonanza Creek Ranch. Two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun. We need help immediately!” she said.
Hutchins was airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, where she was pronounced dead.
