Santa Fe District Attorney Explains How Alec Baldwin’s Claim That He Didn’t Pull The Trigger Could Be True
Santa Fe District Attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, recently stated that she is open to take into consideration Alec Baldwin’s claim that he did not pull the trigger on the gun in the shooting that killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured Director Joel Souza.
According to Vanity Fair, the District Attorney had her investigators perform a test in her office in order to determine whether Baldwin’s claim that he didn’t pull the trigger could be true.
In a now-infamous interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Baldwin reassured that he did not pull the trigger, claiming that he was cocking the gun when it went off accidentally.
“This was a completely incidental shot, an angle that might not have ended up in the film at all. But we kept doing this. So then I said to her, ‘Now, in this scene I’m going to cock the gun.’ And I said, ‘Do you want to see that?’ And she said yes,” the Rust actor told Stephanopoulos.
Baldwin explained, “So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger. I said, ‘Do you see this?’ She says, ‘Well, just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.’ And I cock the gun and I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’ And she says…and I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off.”
“Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,” he reassured. “No, no, no, no. I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never. That was the training that I had. You don’t point a gun at somebody and pull the trigger.”
Interestingly, Baldwin would later contradict his own recollection of the tragic event in the same interview, claiming that at no point did he cock the gun before it went off and declaring that he drew back the hammer of the gun “as far back as I could without cocking the actual…”
“And you are holding on to the hammer?” asked Stephanopoulos in response to the actor’s contradicting new piece of information of the event that ended the life of Halyna Hutchins and injured Joel Souza.
“I’m holding. I’m just showing her,” Baldwin replied. “I go, ‘How about that? Does that work? You see that?’ Do you see that? Do you see that?’ She goes, ‘Yeah that’s good.’ I let go of the hammer. Bang. The gun goes off.”
Baldwin later declared that he did not feel any guilt for killing the Rust cinematographer, arguing that “Someone is responsible for what happened and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.”
Carmack-Altwies claims the test her investigators performed show it’s possible Baldwin did not pull the trigger.
She told Vanity Fair, “You can pull the hammer back without actually pulling the trigger and without actually locking it. So you pull it back partway, it doesn’t lock, and then if you let it go, the firing pin can hit the primer of the bullet.”
Dukes of Hazzard actor John Schneider, who is also an avid firearm enthusiast, explained in detail why Alec Baldwin’s claim that the gun went off without him pulling the trigger does not add up.
“In order for [the gun] to fire, you’ve got to pull [the hammer] all the way back,” Schneider explained regarding the Colt .45 single-action weapon Alec Baldwin was holding when he shot and killed Halyna Hutchins, specifying that “these guns have a safety built” that prevents them from accidentally going off.
“You’ve got to pull [the hammer] back [and] pull the trigger, ” elaborated Schneider, pointing out that “there is some thought that Alec [Baldwin] was fanning” the gun when it went off, explaining that “if I fan [the hammer] it’s going to stick there unless I have my finger on the trigger.”
He further elaborated, “That’s how a single-action weapon works. You can’t accidentally pull the trigger. If you have your finger on the trigger, and you fan it, it will go, because it’s the trigger that releases that catch right there,” as he proceeded to dry fire the gun to demonstrate.
Schneider further asserted, “So, the notion that this weapon could go off without somebody pulling the trigger is really hard to believe,” explaining that some people would leave one chamber empty as a safety measure.
Rust Script Supervisor Mamie Mitchell is also unconvinced by the actor’s recollection of the event, filing a lawsuit against Alec Baldwin that alleges he “intentionally, without just cause or excuse, cocked and fired the loaded gun even though the upcoming scene to be filmed did not call for the cocking and firing of the firearm.”
Mitchell’s lawsuit also accuses Baldwin of hiding behind Assistant Director David Halls, who was the one who allegedly handed him the loaded gun and claimed that it was a “cold gun” and that the actor shouldn’t have assumed it was, in fact, not loaded.
“Alec Baldwin should have assumed that the gun in question was loaded unless and until it was demonstrated to him or checked by him that it was not loaded,” declares the lawsuit.
“He had no right to rely upon some alleged statement by the Assistant Director that it was a ‘cold gun,’” asserting that Baldwin “cannot hide behind the Assistant Director [David Halls] to attempt to excuse the fact that he did not check the gun himself.”
More recently, Halyna Hutchins’ family has filed a separate lawsuit in order to not only hold Alec Baldwin accountable for the killing of the Rust cinematographer, but also several of the film’s production team members.
On behalf of Hutchins’ husband, Matthew Hutchins, and the couple’s son Andros, the lawsuit filed by attorney Krystina Martinez alleges that “Defendant Alec Baldwin recklessly shot and killed Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust,” further noting that the other defendants’ negligence regarding safety rules are also to blame for the death of the cinematographer.
“Defendant Baldwin and the other Defendants in this case failed to perform industry standard safety checks and follow basic gun safety rules while using real guns to produce the movie Rust, with fatal consequences,” accuses the legal document.
The lawsuit filed by Hutchins’ family also names Assistant Director David Halls, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, props manager Sarah Zachry, prop supplier Seth Kenney, and production companies El Dorado Pictures, and Rust Movie Productions, amongst many others.
What do you make of Santa Fe District Attorney being open to consider Alec Baldwin’s claim that he did not pull the trigger on the gun? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below or on social media.
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