Alexis Guilleux with AFP, edited by Antoine Terrel 7:40 am, October 23, 2021
An assistant director told investigators that he had given Alec Baldwin a weapon serving as an accessory placed on a cart by the gunsmith, assuring the actor that it was not loaded.
The gun and casings were seized, as were the clothes of the American actor.
The American actor said he was "devastated".
On Thursday, Alec Baldwin activated a gun that served as a prop on the set of the movie
Rust
, killing the film's cinematographer and seriously injuring the director.
Questioned by the police, he was not arrested, and investigations are continuing.
But if the precise circumstances of the tragedy remain to be established, the first elements of the investigation have been revealed.
An assistant director thus declared under oath to have seized one of the three weapons arranged on a cart by the gunsmith of the film, before handing it to Alec Baldwin, specifying that this weapon was not loaded.
In this same testimony, the assistant assures that he did not know that live bullets were inside.
Difficult working conditions on the set
For the moment, we do not know the nature of the projectile that killed Halyna Hutchins.
Touched in the chest, she was sitting right in front of the director Joel Souza, injured, him, in the shoulder.
The weapon in question and the casings were recovered by the investigators, as well as the clothes of Alec Baldwin, visibly stained with blood, which underlines his proximity to the victims at the time of the tragedy.
Computers, cell phones, images already shot ... The investigators seized all the material present on the scene to try to understand how a loaded weapon could have ended up on the set.
In addition, the atmosphere was not good on the set.
Several people had thus left at the beginning of the week, complaining of difficult working conditions for this western of which Alec Baldwin is also the producer.