A woman has been killed and a man injured Thursday after they were shot by a prop firearm at a movie set outside Santa Fe, authorities said.
Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, the Los Angeles Times and the Santa Fe New Mexican reported the movie’s star and producer Alec Baldwin fired the fatal shot, citing the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office said a 42-year-old woman was airlifted to a hospital, where she died, while a 42-year-old man was getting emergency care at another hospital.
Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, citing a sheriff’s office statement, said the woman killed was cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, while the man injured was director Joel Souza.
Production has been halted on the Western movie “Rust,” which was also written by Souza with Baldwin producing and starring in it.
A spokesperson for Baldwin said there was an accident on the set involving the misfire of a prop gun with blanks.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Baldwin was seen Thursday outside the sheriff’s office in tears, but attempts to get comment from him were unsuccessful.
“According to investigators, it appears that the scene being filmed involved the use of a prop firearm when it was discharged,” sheriff’s spokesman Juan Rios told the Albuquerque Journal. “Detectives are investigating how and what type of projectile was discharged.”
Deputies responded about 2 p.m. to the movie set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch after 911 calls came in of a person being shot on set, Rios said.
Filming for “Rust” was set to continue into early November, according to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office.
The movie is about a 13-year-old boy who is left to fend for himself and his younger brother following the death of their parents in 1880s Kansas, according to the Internet Movie Database website. The teen goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather (played by Baldwin) after the boy is sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.
In 1993, Brandon Lee, 28, son of the late martial-arts star Bruce Lee, died after being hit by a .44-caliber slug while filming a death scene for the movie “The Crow.” The gun was supposed to have fired a blank, but an autopsy turned up a bullet lodged near his spine.
In 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum died after shooting himself in the head with a prop gun blank while pretending to play Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum on the set of the television series “Cover Up.”
–With files from Global News
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