Actor Alec Baldwin, 63, is being sued by a chief electrician who worked with him on the set of the movie “Rust” before the artist accidentally fires a gun and causes the death of director of photography Halyna Hutchins.
According to TMZ, Serge Svetnoy accuses the actor and gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls of negligence in the handling of weapons.
The electrician claims that the bullet that hit the woman almost caught him and that this caused him serious emotional suffering. He also says he was one of the first people to come to the rescue of Halyna, whom he considered a “good friend”.
The professional asks for damages and a jury trial. According to documents obtained by TMZ, Serge claims that Baldwin had a duty to handle carefully the revolver supplied to him by Dave Halls.
“This duty required Defendant Baldwin to double-check the colt revolver with Halls as it was handled to ensure it did not contain live ammunition. This duty further required that he handle the revolver as if it were loaded and refrain from aiming it at someone,” says the document.
The scene Baldwin was recording just before the fatal shot was one in which he had to point the gun at the camera but not pull the trigger.
In the lawsuit, he says Baldwin would have been negligent as the film’s producer as “they tried to save money by hiring an insufficient number of employees to safely handle the props and firearms.”
Elsewhere in the case, the allegation that “there were other lapses on set, including violation of industry standards, denial of requests for weapons training days.” The document ends with the information that “the practice of target shooting that took place shortly before the tragedy was outrageous”.
Some New Mexico film industry workers have been demanding better shooting training and stricter gun regulations since director of photography Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the set of Western “Rust.”
Direct spending by New Mexico’s film and television industry has doubled since 2015, as have the hours that teams spend on movie sets, according to state data.
Producers, film set managers, crew members and actors interviewed by Reuters said the growth far outstrips the supply of trained workers, putting the safety of film sets at risk.
Baldwin said he believes film and television productions should hire police to monitor guns on sets.
Baldwin accidentally shot and killed director of photography Halyna Hutchins on Oct. 21, after being told that the gun he was rehearsing with on the set of “Rust” in New Mexico was “cold”, meaning safe to use, according to the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities are trying to determine how a live bullet ended up in the weapon given to Baldwin. Lawyers for the woman responsible for the guns in “Rust” said she believed she had loaded the gun with dummy bullets.
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