Alec Baldwin has filed a lawsuit against several Rust crew members after the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins.
The actor accidentally shot the mother-of-one while they were filming Rust in October 2021.
Last month, the 64-year-old reached a settlement in the cinematographer’s wrongful death lawsuit, which saw Halyna’s widower Matthew become an executive producer on the film.
Alec has since sued the armorer and several Rust crew members for negligence, for providing him with a loaded gun and failing to maintain safety on set of the film.
The 64-year-old’s lawsuit targets four crew members; Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Dave Halls, Sarah Zachry, and Seth Kenney.
The actor’s lawyer, Luke Nikas, wrote in a countersuit: “This tragedy happened because live bullets were delivered to the set and loaded into the gun,” per The Washington Post.
“Gutierrez-Reed failed to check the bullets or the gun carefully, Halls failed to check the gun carefully and yet announced the gun was safe before handing it to Baldwin, and Zachry failed to disclose that Gutierrez-Reed had been acting recklessly off set and was a safety risk to those around her.”
The lawyer added that Alec “seeks to clear his name” and hold each of the defendants “accountable for their misconduct”.
According to the New York Times, the lawsuit accuses the fourth crew member Seth Kenney, who supplied all of the film’s guns, of “haphazardly” storing all the ammunition.
The documents also cited an FBI report which indicated that Sarah Zachry and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed didn’t keep track of all the live bullets on set.
According to lawyers, Alec had pointed the prop gun at Halyna during the set-up for the filming of a scene when it discharged.
The actor previously insisted he was pointing the gun at the cinematographer at her instruction, and it fired without him pulling the trigger.
However, a forensics investigation completed by the FBI back in September found the weapon in question could not have been fired without the trigger being physically pulled.
A further post-mortem report classified Halyna’s death as an accident.
