Now, Scrutiny of Another Crew Member on Fatal Baldwin Film

The assistant director who handed Alec Baldwin the gun that killed a cinematographer last week had been fired from a previous job after a gun went off on a set and wounded a member of the film crew, a producer said Monday. The disclosure emerged as producers of Baldwin's movie officially halted filming, and court records showed that investigators seized more than two dozen items from the Rust set on the day after the shooting. In an email statement to the AP, a producer for the movie Freedom’s Path confirmed that Dave Halls was fired from the 2019 production after a crew member suffered a minor injury "when a gun was unexpectedly discharged.” The producer, who asked not to be identified by name, wrote that Halls “was removed from the set immediately." Production did not resume until Halls was gone.

The producer is the second person to air doubts about Halls' safety record. On Sunday, another crew member who worked with Halls said she raised concerns about him in 2019. Maggie Goll, a prop maker and licensed pyrotechnician, said in a statement that she filed an internal complaint with the executive producers of Hulu’s Into the Dark series over Halls’ behavior. Goll said in a phone interview that Halls disregarded safety protocols for weapons and pyrotechnics and tried to continue filming after the supervising pyrotechnician, who was diabetic, lost consciousness on set. Previously, scrutiny has swirled around the young armorer on the Rust set as well as the producers who hired her.

Moments before the shooting, Baldwin was explaining how he was going to draw the revolver from his holster and where his arm would be positioned, court records show. The actor had been told that the gun was safe to use for the rehearsal of a scene in which he was supposed to pull out the weapon while sitting in a church pew and point it at the camera, the records said. Authorities have said that Halls had handed the weapon to Baldwin and announced “cold gun,” indicating it was safe. The camera was not rolling when the gun went off and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Hours before the shooting, crew members had walked off the set to protest production issues including safety concerns, and sources say there had been at least two other gun misfires before the fatal shot. (Conservatives are taking aim at Baldwin.)