the family of Halyna Hutchins is demanding that the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office remove the released video of her “dying on the church floor” in the moments after she was shot on the set of the movie “Rust” last year. The request was made in a letter written by the family’s attorney and obtained by CNN.
Halyna, the film’s cinematographer, was killed and the director Joel Souza was injured when a gun handled by the actor Alec Baldwin shot while rehearsing a scene at Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico last October.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office on Monday released several files from its ongoing investigation into the shooting, including photos, recordings and reports, officials said. Video of Halyna dying is included in the released data.
In the letter to the sheriff’s office, Brian Panishattorney for the Hutchins family, said the release of the evidence caused “irreparable” harm to her husband, Matthew Hutchinsand the son.
“Your office trampled on the constitutional rights of the Halyna Hutchins,” reads the letter, dated April 27. “Without any discussion, his office unilaterally determined that Mr. Hutchins would have access to the materials for review early in the morning on Monday, April 25, before being released to the public later in the afternoon, giving him less than one business day to review the materials.”
Due to the “massive volume of material”, it was “a totally inappropriate amount of time”, and the family did not have the opportunity to “request that discretion be exercised and that sensitive material be redacted”, Panish wrote.
Also, the letter said, the sheriff’s office did not redact Halyna Hutchins’ personal and private information. Panish wrote that her client fears the video of his wife’s final moments could be used by bullies to emotionally abuse their son.
The letter demands that the sheriff’s office respect the Hutchins family’s “constitutional rights to dignity, privacy, respect and justice going forward” and the office remove footage of the director “dying on the church floor.”
“While the damage from publishing the video is irreparable, the removal of the video will end your office’s complicity in causing further harm,” the letter reads.
CNN has contacted the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office to confirm receipt of the letter and additional comments.
During an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza defended the release of the material. “We are in response to a public records request where we are required to disclose information, and it was also an effort to be transparent in the investigation,” Mendoza said.
The investigation is “almost done,” he told ABC, adding that his office is awaiting FBI analysis of ammunition, latent prints, DNA, a coroner’s report and some analysis of cell phone data. His office expects this to be over in “weeks rather than months,” he told the GMA.
Released evidence includes ‘worrying texts’, says sheriff
Evidence files released by the sheriff’s office also contained text messages that the gunsmith Hannah GutierrezReed shared with an ammo supplier for a previous film in 2021 – not “Rust” – where she stated that she planned to shoot live ammunition while on set.
Mendoza called the text messages “worrying” during an interview with NBC’s “Today” on Tuesday and said investigators are looking into who brought live ammunition to the set of “Rust.”
“At this time, no one has come forward and admitted to bringing the ammunition to the filming set. There was text message information that was concerning based on the fact that live ammunition was spoken and possibly used on a previous film set and this was just a few months before production began on the ‘Rust’ film set, so this is worrying,” Mendoza said.
A law enforcement official told CNN he considers the text exchange important as it tries to determine whether the gunsmith practiced conducting live shooting drills at the same time as he was responsible for set security.
Gutierrez Reed’s attorney Jason Bowles told CNN that his client wanted to fire the gun to understand how the historic gun worked and claims she didn’t fire actual shots on set.
Source: CNN Brasil
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