There is much speculation about the role of David Hales in the October 21 incident in New Mexico, after he told investigators that he should have checked the weapon, but he did not.
In a statement published by the New York Post, Hals said he was “shocked and saddened” after the killing of “Rust” director of film Helena Hutchins, but he did not comment on how the accident happened or his role in it.
“Halina Hutchins was not only one of the most talented people I’ve worked with, but also a friend,” he wrote in his statement.
“I hope that this tragedy will prompt the film sector to reconsider its values and practices” to prevent the recurrence of tragedies of this kind, he added.
David Hales was in charge of the guns during the shooting of “Rust” with weapons supervisor Hana Gutierrez Reid, and was supposed to make sure they were free of any live bullets before they entered the set.
The officers said the assistant director told them he should have checked that all the bullets in the gun Alec Baldwin used to rehearse the scene were fake, but he admitted he didn’t.
A live bullet fired by Baldwin accidentally hit director of photography Helena Hutchins and then led to her death, and continued to fall into the shoulder of director Joel Sousa.
And NBC television revealed that one of the team members resigned the day before the accident, expressing concerns about safety conditions during filming.
According to the station, Line Looper warned in an email in which he submitted his resignation that “two shots were previously fired from a display of weapons, in addition to an explosion that was scheduled to be among the special effects occurred near the crew between filming periods,” adding: “To be clear.” Security is not available these days.
A petition calling for actual firearms to be banned on set has garnered more than 100,000 signatures as of Monday.
The authors of this petition stressed that it is easy to add visual and sound effects to dummy weapons after filming the films.
Baldwin himself spoke last weekend for the first time about the accident, and said that “accidents sometimes happen on filming sites, but not of this kind. The risk of something like this happening is one in a thousand billion,” noting that he could not talk about the facts. As long as the investigation is ongoing.
No arrest warrant has yet been issued, but the attorney general in the city of Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, who is investigating the incident, did not rule out prosecutions if the responsibilities were determined.
.