Alec Baldwin’s Claim He Didn’t Pull Trigger In ‘Rust’ Shooting Refuted By New Firearms Report

etcanada.com:

Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his Western film, “Rust”, is once again being called into question.

In April, involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin were dropped by the New Mexico District Attorney. Baldwin pleaded not guilty to the charges and has repeatedly insisted he did not pull the trigger on the gun, which discharged a live round and fatally wounded Hutchins, and injured director Joel Souza.

The film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, also was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. According to a new firearms report — submitted as part of a new motion filed by Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys in her ongoing court case — claims that it would it would not have been possible for the gun to have gone off without Baldwin having pulled the trigger. “Although Alec Baldwin repeatedly denies pulling the trigger, given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver,” states the firearms report, which was prepared for the special prosecutors by an Arizona-based forensic firearms examiner.

According to the docs, “If the hammer had not been fully retracted to the rear, and were to slip from the handler’s thumb without the trigger depressed, the half-cock or quarter-cock notches in the hammer should have prevented the firing pin from reaching any cartridge in the firing chamber.” “If these features were somehow bypassed, a conspicuously off-centre firing pin impression would result,” the firearms report claims.