The actor Alec Baldwin is facing criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter over the fatal film-set shooting of a cinematographer during a rehearsal of the western film Rust, according to prosecutors.
The film’s armorer overseeing weapons, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, is also set to be charged with involuntary manslaughter over the death of DP Halyna Hutchins, who was killed on the set of the western in New Mexico in 2021 when she was shot with a prop gun the US actor was using.
The Santa Fe district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, announced the charges and plea deal in a statement and on social media, without public appearances by prosecutors. Carmack-Altwies said the charges against both Baldwin and Gutierrez Reed had not yet been filed on Thursday, but would be before the end of January.
“On my watch, no one is above the law, and everyone deserves justice,” Carmack-Altwies’s statement said. A statement attributed to the prosecutor Carmack-Altwies appointed to the case, Andrea Reeb, added: “If any of these three people – Alec Baldwin, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed or David Halls – had done their job, Halyna Hutchins would be alive today.”
An attorney for Baldwin, Luke Nikas, said his client “had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun” on the day Hutchins was killed, and condemned the charges against the actor as “a terrible miscarriage of justice”.
“We will fight these charges,” Nikas’s statement said. “And we will win.”
