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Halyna Hutchins' Father: Alec Baldwin 'Partly Responsible' For Shooting On 'Rust' Set
“It’s clear to me Baldwin fired the shot from his hand so it’s hard for me to understand how he cannot be held partly responsible for my daughter’s death,” Halyna Hutchins' father Anatoly Androsovych said.
The father of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins said in an interview that he believes actor Alec Baldwin is “partly responsible” for his daughter’s death.
Hutchins was killed Oct. 21 on the set of the film “Rust” when a gun Baldwin was holding discharged and struck her in the chest during rehearsals, according to search warrants obtained by Oxygen.com.
While Baldwin has insisted that he never pulled the trigger and believed he was rehearsing with a “cold gun” — a term used to describe a gun without any live ammunition — Hutchins’ father Anatoly Androsovych is now questioning that account.
“Why did he fire the shot during the preparations?” he told The Sun. “The revolver is the type of gun which doesn’t shoot before the trigger is pressed and Alec is partially guilty for causing that shot.”
Androsovych said he doesn’t understand Baldwin’s claim that the gun fired “without pulling the trigger.”
“It’s clear to me Baldwin fired the shot from his hand so it’s hard for me to understand how he cannot be held partly responsible for my daughter’s death,” he said.
Androsovych, a former submarine captain, also questioned why Baldwin deleted his Twitter account — and with it, a public record of past comments he'd made about the tragedy on Twitter.
“I can’t understand the behavior of Alec,” he said. “Why did he sweep out his tweets when it became clear the shooting was on rehearsal?”
Baldwin reportedly deleted his main, verified Twitter account in early December shortly after he gave his first media interview about the shooting to ABC News, Variety reports.
Baldwin told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that, on the day of the fatal shooting, he had been blocking the scene with Hutchins, who he said was instructing him where to point the gun at the time.
“She's guiding me through how she wants me to hold the gun for this angle,” he told the news outlet. “I'm holding the gun where she told me to hold it, which ended up being aimed right below her armpit.”
He insisted he “didn’t pull the trigger” and said the gun went off during the rehearsal.
“I cock the gun. I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?” he said. “And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off.”
When pressed about what happened, Baldwin again reiterated that he hadn’t fired the weapon.
“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them.”
Before the fatal shooting, Baldwin said he had been handed the weapon by first assistant director Dave Halls, who Baldwin said described it as a “cold gun” during the hand-off.
Investigators are now trying to determine how a live bullet got into the weapon.
“Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn't even supposed to be on the property,” Baldwin told ABC News. “Someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me.”
Investigators believe that ammunition for the film was provided by three sources: PDQ Arm & Prop; an individual identified in the search warrant only as “Billy Ray”; and the film’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who brought some of the ammunition from a previous production, according to a search warrant.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said in a press conference shortly after the shooting that authorities recovered approximately 500 rounds of ammunition from the film set, which included a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and suspected live ammunition.
They have also served a search warrant on PDQ Arm & Prop to seize live and spent rounds at the Albuquerque-based business.
Last week, a judge also signed off a search warrant allowing investigators to seize Baldwin’s phone in an effort to examine any call logs, digital photos and videos, private messages sent on social media platforms and other messages related to the movie. The actor's lawyers requested that a search warrant be issued to insure his privacy during the search.
To date, no criminal charges have been filed in connection with Hutchins’ death.
Androsovych told The Sun that, while Hutchins’ 9-year-old son is trying to move forward after the tragedy, he questions whether the boy will “ever fully recover.”
“Andros is slowly getting back to life, but this is a huge blow for all of us,” he said.
