Alec Baldwin criminal investigation released by Santa Fe Sheriff - READ FULL REPORT
Alec Baldwin criminal investigation released by Santa Fe Sheriff - READ FULL REPORT
All the evidence about how Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the 'Rust' set
The Alec Baldwin shooting is finally getting more public transparency about the investigation into the Oct. 2021 shooting death of Halyna Hutchins. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza released the investigative case binder about Baldwin on Friday afternoon. The full 551-page report is attached below for paid subscribers to read.
I’ve read the report and these are the key pieces of evidence that has not before been made public:
A video on Bladwin’s cell phone from a week before he kills Halyna shows him with a shotgun and “Alec flags and shoots in what appears to be almost in the direction of the individual filming the video.” Other videos show him running out of the church with a pistol and he “flags the individual who is recording the video several times with the pistol as he shoots it several times in different directions.”
From Baldwin’s cell phone, he texts his assistant Jonah Foxman two days after the Oct. 21 shooting and says, “I have to delete my archive.”
There is a video on Baldwin’s phone of him shooting a gun and a female voice that sound like Hannah saying “nice.” [this shows he had training with her]
Baldwin texted Matthew Hutchins, Halyna’s husband, on Dec. 10, 2021: “Important for you to keep in mind: the Santa Fe Sheriff’s office may lack both the skill and the will to properly investigate the sabotage angle. I’m told their agenda is to write it off as an accident and throw it to the civil courts. And yes, the more information that is presented to me about certain anomalies on that day, the more open-minded I become.”
Baldwin texted Hutchins: “I will tell you that among the most significant and salient points I put out there was that the gun WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE FIRED from that camera angle. It was an angle on the gun being drawn and ….cut. That set up did not call for the gun to shoot AT ALL. I told him that Halyna and I had something important in common. We both believe the gun was empty”
Baldwin didn’t want a child around when using the gun — A week before the shooting, a kid was on set and Baldwin told the crew he wanted the boy taken away while he fired the gun. [This means he knew the danger of guns on set, loaded or not.]
Baldwin’s agreement on searching his phone includes that the police “will not review or copy any communication between Mr. Baldwin and his spouse, Hilaria Baldwin.”
Halyna Hutchins was conscious after she was shot, per Reid Russell, the Steady Cam Operator. Baldwin seems to have left the building after the shooting. Halyna told Reid that she couldn’t feel her legs. The set medic asked the lighting electrician Serge Svetnoy to put pressure on her entrance wound and Reid to do the same on the exit wound on her back.
Reid spoke to Halyna while the medic did chest compressions, saying, “you have to pull through.” He said Serge was speaking to her in her other ear in Russian. Reid said that at one point Halyna turned her head and looked into his eyes “as if she was trying to tell me something.” He said in sorrow that he will “never forget that.” Baldwin is not mentioned in the 25 minutes that they tried to save Hutchins’s life.
During the months that the sheriff tried to get Baldwin’s cell phone (and finally had to get a search warrant from the DA to get him to turn it over to the New York Suffolk County Police Department), Baldwin changed lawyers from Aaron Dyer to Luke Nikas. Then Nikas told the sheriff that there were “several items on the phone” that were “flagged for removal” from the final extraction report. There was a meeting in June with the sheriff and DA and Baldwin’s lawyer about the final phone report.
Baldwin told the deputies that he has experience with guns from previous productions and trained and rehearsed for hours on various types of weapons. He said the production had been very safety conscious since the beginning of filming.
Baldwin said he watched Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer for the movie, load the gun many times. He said he did not look inside at the rounds of the gun used in the shooting. Baldwin said the gun was supposed to be empty for the rehearsal [when Hutchins was shot] and then “flash rounds” [blanks"] used when they went to film the scene later.
While Guiterrez-Reed was alone in the sheriff’s office for an interview, she called an unknown person and said, “I checked them, they rattled” [referring to the cartridges]; “They were fucking dummies” [in reference to a fake cartridge that looks like a live round]
Hannah told the sheriff deputies that the purpose of dummy rounds is to put them in the belt of the cowboys and in the revolvers for close-up shots so the gun doesn’t look empty. She said blanks “open up and a little gunpowder comes out.”
Hannah was asked if live ammo is ever kept on set and she replied, “no, never.” She then said she hardly goes shooting with .45 ammo and usually uses .22 caliber.
Hannah told the deputies that she checked that all six rounds in the gun rattled and had a hole in the side which indicated they were dummies. She said the box of dummy rounds came from their supplier, Seth Kenney, her supplier, who said he “borrowed” them from someone else.
Hannah texted Baldwin’s assistant Jonah and said she is worried because he never tried shooting with a holster. She asked if he would be ready to do the scene the next day.
Sheriff public release
This is what the email from the Santa Fe Sheriff’s spokesman said with the release of the report:
Included in this email is a copy of the entire hardcopy file (in electronic format) of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office case file submitted to the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office….
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office requires additional time to respond for release of the remaining digital files related to this case file. The next release of documents is expected to be no later than December 20, 2022.
Questions about the report? Comments about the findings? Leave a comment below…