FBI forensic testers have concluded that the Rust film set shooting, which took place back in October, could not have happened without Alec Baldwin consciously pulling the trigger.
The shooting took place around a year ago after Baldwin was rehearsing a scene on the set in New Mexico. While rehearsing using the cocked weapon Baldwin fired upon one of his coworkers, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
Since his interview with ABC in December, Baldwin has been insisting that “the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger,”
“So then I said to [Hutchins], ‘Now in this scene, I’m going to the gun.’ And I said, ‘Do you want to see that?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger.”
The weapon used in the shooting, a .45 colt caliber single-action revolver, is fired when the trigger forces the hammer of the gun forwards via force, which strikes a round of ammunition and forces the weapon to fire.
The government investigation, being led by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office, found that the gun “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger.” They also reported that when the weapon was fully cocked, it “could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional.”
However, examiners also found that the gun malfunctioned with fully-cocked back. “Portions of the trigger sear and cylinder stop fractured while the hammer was struck,” their report stated. They also noted the limitations of their testing, stating that “it may not be possible to recreate or duplicate all of the circumstances which led to the discharge of a firearm without a pull of the trigger.”
The bureau is also trying to investigate how live ammunition got on the movie set in the first place.
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