A former crew member on the film Rust said he “never felt as close to death” on a set as he did in the days before Halyna Hutchins was killed.
Lane Luper was the lead camera operator for the production but resigned the day before his friend and cinematographer Ms Hutchins was shot dead with a live bullet, fired by the film’s star actor, Alec Baldwin.
In his resignation letter to a production manager, seen by Sky News, Mr Luper highlights concerns about the safety and welfare of crew as the reason for him walking away.
In the email, sent to unit production manager Row Walters, Mr Luper noted two accidental discharges of firearms and one accidental discharge of special effects explosives in the days before Ms Hutchins was killed during rehearsal for a scene.
Image: Ms Hutchins was shot dead with a live bullet fired by Alec Baldwin. Pic: Swen Studios
He wrote: “During the filming of gunfights on this job things are often played very fast and loose.
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“So far there have been two accidental weapons discharges and one additional SFX explosives that have gone off around the crew between takes.
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“To be clear there are NO safety meetings these days. There have been NO explanations as to what to expect for these shots.”
Mr Luper said he is speaking out now because he wants to make clear that Ms Hutchins’s death, in his opinion, was caused by cutting costs and cutting corners.
Image: Baldwin is the only person involved with the production to speak publicly about Ms Hutchins’s death
“Halyna’s death was so preventable by simply following industry safety rules that had been in place for literally decades,” he told Sky News.
“I have never felt more unsafe on set or off set. I’ve never felt I was more in danger of dying on the set or on the drive home, I was so exhausted.”
Mr Luper said that the production team on the independent film put potential profit first, at the expense of safety and welfare of the crew.
“The crew themselves worked very hard but I don’t think they were necessarily respected by the producers,” Mr Luper said.
“This set was unsafe simply because they didn’t have the wherewithal to follow safety rules that we have in this industry.”
There are six producers credited for Rust, which is an independent production. They are Ryan Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Matt DelPiano, Anjul Nigam and Baldwin.
Image: Lane Luper (right) said the death of Ms Hutchins (left) was ‘so preventable’
Hollywood veteran Baldwin is the only one to speak publicly about Ms Hutchins’s death, after he was tracked down by photographers in a mountain town in Vermont, where he owns a holiday home.
He described what he said was a “well oiled” crew on set but Mr Luper disputes that view.
“Would I say the whole thing was well-oiled? Absolutely not,” Mr Luper said.
“We didn’t know what was going on at the time. There were no rehearsals, there were no safety meetings to explain what the next shot was, which is also a requirement of every time you use firearms.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Rust producers said: “Mr Luper’s allegations around budget and safety are patently false, which is not surprising considering his job was to be a camera operator, and he had absolutely nothing to do with it or knowledge of safety protocols or budgets.
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3:39
‘She was my friend’, Baldwin says
“As we continue to cooperate with all investigations, we are limited in what we can say.
“However, safety is always the number one priority in our films, and it is truly awful to see someone using this tragedy for personal gain.”
Sky News has also seen a resignation letter sent by another crew member, who quit the film, citing what he said was a disregard for safety around firearms by the film’s assistant director Dave Halls.
“I also feel anxious on set,” he wrote in an email to a production manager.
“I’ve seen first-hand our AD rush to get shots and he skips over important protocols.
“I have tinnitus in my right ear and he often rushes to shoot, I’ve had more than a few occasions where I have been close to the weapons being fired with no regards to my hearing.
“Sometimes he rushes so quickly that props hasn’t even had the chance to bring earplugs and he rolls and the actors fire anyway.
“I feel torn because I like the show and my team but for many reasons I have to walk away for my own health and safety.”
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1:50
‘There was complacency on this set’
Sky News has approached Mr Halls and his lawyer for comment but has not yet received a response.
The police investigation into Ms Hutchins’s death is ongoing and one of the central questions they are considering is why exactly live ammunition found its way on to a film set.
Image: Douglas Stewart (right) on set with Francis Fisher
It is bemusing to Douglas Stewart, one of the actors on Rust. He had a positive experience filming.
He was not on set at the time of Ms Hutchins’s death but is now joining calls for real guns to be banned on films.
“For there to be a live round in a gun handed to an actor is unconscionable and unbelievable,” he said.
Image: The police investigation into Ms Hutchins’s death is ongoing
“Everybody in my acting community, we were stunned. We just couldn’t believe it happened and still can’t.”
Those who worked with Ms Hutchins believe she would have become one of Hollywood’s leading cinematographers.
They now hope her legacy can be that of safer sets for cast and crew, which means a tragedy like this cannot happen again.
Luigi Mangione has pleaded not guilty to murdering a US healthcare chief executive – as prosecutors formally confirmed they plan to seek the death penalty for him.
The 26-year-old defendant appeared in a Manhattan federal court for an arraignment over the killing of Brian Thompson in New York last year.
Mangione has previously pleaded not guilty to a separate New York state indictment he faces over the murder of Mr Thompson, the boss of UnitedHealth’s insurance division.
While public officials condemned the killing, some Americans – and people elsewhere across the world – have lauded Mangione, saying he drew attention to steep US healthcare costs and the power of health insurers to refuse payment for some treatments.
Image: A pedestrian walks past a mural of Luigi Mangione in east London. Pic: Reuters
In justifying their decision to seek the death penalty, prosecutors wrote in their filing that Mangione “presents a future danger because he expressed an intent to target an entire industry, and rally political and social opposition to that industry, by engaging in an act of lethal violence”.
US attorney general Pam Bondi earlier this month announced that the Justice Department would seek the death penalty for Mangione.
Mangione’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
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They have said Ms Bondi’s announcement on 1 April was “unapologetically political” and breached government protocols for death penalty decisions.
Image: UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. Pic: UnitedHealth Group/AP
If Mangione is convicted in the federal case, the jury would determine in a separate phase of the trial whether to recommend the death penalty.
Any such recommendation must be unanimous, and the judge would be required to impose it.
Mr Thompson was shot dead on 4 December outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, where an investor conference for the company was planned.
The killing sparked a five-day manhunt that captivated Americans.
Police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, found Mangione with a 9mm pistol and silencer, clothing that matched the apparel worn by Thompson’s gunman in surveillance footage, and a notebook describing an intent to “wack” an insurance company CEO, according to a court filing.
In October 2016, Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint – with jewellery worth millions of dollars stolen during the audacious heist in Paris.
It was the biggest robbery of an individual in France for more than 20 years – and made front pages around the world.
Now, almost a decade on, the case is finally coming to court.
Why has it taken so long? Will Kardashian give evidence? And who exactly are the “grandpa robbers” facing trial?
Here’s everything you need to know.
Image: Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What happened?
Two years after Kardashian and rapper Kanye West tied the knot in an ostentatious week-long celebration spanning Paris and Florence, the Kardashian-West clan were back in the French capital for Paris Fashion Week.
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Her then husband had returned to the US to pick up his Saint Pablo tour – but Kardashian, along with her sister Kourtney and various members of their entourage, remained in Paris, staying in an exclusive set of apartments so discreet they’ve been dubbed the No Address Hotel.
Nestled on Tronchet Street, just a stone’s throw from Place de l’Opéra, and close to the fashionable Avenue Montaigne, the Hotel de Pourtalès is popular with A-list stars staying in the French capital.
A stay in the Sky Penthouse, the suite occupied by Kardashian, will currently set you back about £13,000 a night.
Image: Kardashian was staying at the Hotel de Pourtales
On the evening of 3 October, after attending a fashion show with her sister, Kardashian remained in the apartment alone while the rest of her convoy – including her bodyguard Pascal Duvier – went out for the night.
At about 2.30am, three armed men wearing ski masks and dressed as police forced their way into the apartment block – and according to investigators, they threatened the concierge at gunpoint.
Two of them are alleged to have forced the concierge to lead them to Kardashian’s suite. He later told police they yelled at him: “Where’s the rapper’s wife?”
Kardashian said she had been “dozing” on her bed when the men then entered her room.
She has said she believes her social media posts provided the alleged robbers with “a window of opportunity”.
“I was Snapchatting that I was home, and that everyone was going out,” she said in the months after the incident.
The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star vividly described the attack in a police report, as reported in the French weekly paper Le Journal du Dimanche.
“They grabbed me and took me into the hallway. They tied me up with plastic cables and taped my hands, then they put tape over my mouth and my legs.”
She said they pointed a gun at her, asking specifically for her ring and also for money.
Image: Police guard the entrance to the Hotel de Pourtalès the day after the robbery
Kardashian says they carried her into the bathroom and put her in the bathtub. She said she was wearing only a bathrobe at the time.
She had initially thought the robbers “were terrorists who had come to kidnap me”, according to a French police report taken in New York three months after the robbery.
Kardashian told officers: “I thought I was going to die.”
According to police, the robbers – who left the room after grabbing their haul, escaped on bicycles with items estimated to be worth about $10m (£7.5m), including a $4m (£3m) 18.88-carat diamond engagement ring from West.
After they had left, Kardashian said she escaped her restraints and went to find help. After speaking to detectives, she immediately returned to the US on a private jet and later hired a completely new security team.
Image: Kardashian shows off her $4m ring on Instagram
What was stolen?
As well as her engagement ring, Kardashian said the thieves took her large Louis Vuitton jewellery box, which she said contained “everything I owned”.
In police reports given to the French authorities at about 4.30am on the night of the alleged robbery, Kardashian listed these items as having been stolen:
• Two diamond Cartier bracelets • A gold and diamond Jacob necklace • Diamond earrings by Lauren Schwartz • Yanina earrings • Three gold Jacob necklaces • Little bracelets, jewels and rings • A Lauren Schwartz diamond necklace • A necklace with six little diamonds • A necklace with Saint spelt out in diamonds • A cross-shaped diamond-encrusted Jacob cross • A yellow gold Rolex watch • Two yellow gold rings • An iPhone 6 and a BlackBerry
Police recovered only the diamond-encrusted cross that was dropped by the robbers while leaving.
It’s likely the gold in the haul was melted down and resold, while the diamond engagement ring that is now so associated with the robbery would be far too recognisable to sell on the open market.
Image: Kardashian at the Siran Presentation on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What will happen in court?
The hearing will begin at the Court of Appeal of Paris – the largest appeals court in France – on 28 April and is scheduled to last a month.
It will consist of a presiding judge, two professional assessors, and six main jurors.
The hearing involves more than 2,000 documents and there are four civil parties.
Image: Kardashian at the Balenciaga show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Who is being tried?
There were initially 12 defendants in the case, but one person has died and another has a medical condition that prevents their involvement. This means 10 people – nine men and one woman – are standing trial.
Five of them, who were all aged between 60 and 72 at the time of the incident, face armed robbery and kidnapping charges. They are:
• Yunice Abbas • Aomar Ait Khedache • Harminv Ait Khedache • Didier Dubreucq • Marc-Alexandre Boyer
Abbas, 72, has admitted his participation in the robbery. In 2021, he published a book about the robbery, titled I Kidnapped Kim Kardashian. In 2021, a court ruled he would not benefit financially from the book.
Aomar Ait Khedache, 69, known to French crime reporters as “Old Omar”, has also admitted participating in the heist but denies the prosecution’s accusation that he was the ringleader.
The remaining five defendants are charged with complicity in the heist or the unauthorised possession of a weapon. They are:
• Florus Heroui • Gary Mader • Christiane Glotin • François Delaporte • Marc Boyer
Among those, Mader was a VIP greeter who worked for the car company Kardashian used in Paris, and Heroui was a bar manager who allegedly passed on information about Kardashian’s movements.
With many of the accused now ageing and with various serious health conditions, and some having spent time in jail following their arrest, all are currently free under judicial supervision.
If found guilty, those accused of the more serious crimes could face 10 years to life imprisonment.
Image: Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Will Kardashian give evidence?
Yes.
Lawyer Michael Rhodes said Kardashian has “tremendous appreciation and admiration for the French judicial system” and “wishes for the trial to proceed in an orderly fashion in accordance with French law and with respect for all parties to the case”.
A trainee lawyer herself, Kardashian has become a high-profile criminal justice advocate in the US in recent years.
Image: (R-L) Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kris Jenner in the front row three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
Why has it taken so long to come to court?
There was initially a manhunt after the robbery, with French police under pressure to prove that Paris’s security was not in question.
Just the year before in 2015, the capital had been shaken by terrorist attacks by Islamic militants, in which 130 people were killed, including 90 at a music event at the Bataclan theatre.
French police initially arrested 17 people in the Kardashian case in January 2017 – three months after the robbery – assisted by DNA traces found on plastic bands used to tie her wrists. Twelve people were later charged.
It was ordered to be sent to trial in 2021 – at a time when limited court proceedings were happening due to multiple COVID lockdowns, and France was holding its largest ever criminal trial over the November 2015 terror attacks.
Image: Kardashian at the Givenchy show on the day of the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
What has Kardashian said about the incident?
Kardashian has described the robbery as a “life-changing” moment. She took three weeks away from filming her reality TV show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, and took a three-month break from social media.
In a March 2017 episode titled Paris, Kardashian first spoke publicly about her ordeal.
She described first hearing a noise in her apartment, and calling out, thinking it was her sister and assistant: “At that moment when there wasn’t an answer, my heart started to get really tense. Like, you know, your stomach just kind of like, knots up and you’re like, ‘OK, what’s going on?’ I knew something wasn’t quite right.”
She went on: “They asked for money. I said, ‘I don’t have any money’. They dragged me out to the hallway on top of the stairs. That’s when I saw the gun, clear as day. I was looking at the gun, looking down back at the stairs. I was like, I have a split second in my mind to make this quick decision.
“Either they’re going to shoot me in the back or if I make it [down the stairs] and the elevator does not open in time or the stairs are locked, there’s no way out.”
Three months later, she told a Forbes Power Women’s Summit she had changed her approach to posting on social media: “They had followed my moves on social media, and they knew my every move and what I had.”
She added: “It was definitely a huge, huge, huge lesson for me to not show off some of the things that I have. It was a huge lesson to me to not show off where I go.
“It’s just changed my whole life, but I think for the better.”
Image: West and Kardashian at the Off-White show three days before the robbery. Pic: Rex Features
In October 2020, Kardashian told US interviewer David Letterman she feared she would be raped and murdered during the heist, and that her sister had been at the forefront of her mind during the incident.
Speaking on My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, Kardashian said: “I kept on thinking about Kourtney, I kept on thinking she’s going to come home and I’m going to be dead in the room and she’s going to be traumatised for the rest of her life if she sees me… I thought that was my fate.”
When speaking to French police about the impact the robbery had had on her three months after it, Kardashian said: “I think that my perception of jewellery now is that I am not as attached to it as I used to be. I don’t have the same feeling about it. In fact, I even think that it has become a bit of a burden to have the responsibility of such expensive jewels.
“There is nothing of sentimental value to compare with the act of going home and finding one’s children and one’s family.”
She went on to describe Paris as “not the right place” for her, and didn’t return to the French capital for two years following the robbery.
Kardashian has since said in a 2023 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians that she did not purchase any jewellery in the seven years following the robbery, kept no jewellery at her home and only wore items that are either borrowed or fake.
She said the realisation that material items don’t matter has made her “a completely different person in the best way”.
First he took the US on a collision course with China. Then he came for the rest of the world.
He crashed into the financial markets and now Donald Trump has been gently tapping on the brakes all week.
The world’s economic policymakers have been on quite the journey over the past few months.
Many of them will have felt a little queasy as they got off the plane in Washington DC for the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) annual spring meetings.
This was their opportunity to talk. To strategise, strengthen alliances and figure out their next move.
Rachel Reeves was in the mix. While all the focus has been on a US-UK trade deal– and she is due to meet her US counterpart on Friday – the chancellor was also here to meet her G7 and G20 allies.
Countries across the world are eager for Mr Trump to reduce his tariffs but they are also looking to each other, reflecting on how the world might look in the future and whether the US is a reliable long-term partner.
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That much was obvious from a conversation with Paschal Donohoe, Ireland’s finance minister and president of the Eurogroup.
He told Sky News that Ireland, a highly US-orientated economy, was diversifying.
That being said, he was “more optimistic than some” that a high level of trade integration would prevail well into the future.
“What I think is very possible is the structure of that globalisation could begin to change,” he said.
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6:28
‘We’re confident,’ says Chancellor Reeves
That changing structure might include a rejection of China’s decades-long model of export-led growth.
Since joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China has been pumping out cheap goods into the world economy, making far more than it consumes at home.
Poor countries across the world have taken a similar approach to development but the US Treasury secretary said on the sidelines of the IMF on Wednesday that it was “absurd” for multilateral institutions to continue treating China like a developing economy.
There is a recognition among world leaders that some of Mr Trump’s grievances are reasonable.
They believe his approach is the wrong one but in interviews they are now talking about the negative consequences of trade imbalances and globalisation – the impact on communities and the undercutting of wages.
That wasn’t the case just a few months ago.
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Ms Reeves took it one step further. On Wednesday, the Treasury announced plans to tackle the dumping of cheap goods into the UK – no doubt aimed at China.
She announced a review of the customs’ treatment of low-value imports.
Currently goods valued at £135 escape the duty. The US has already taken action.
In an interview with Sky News, she said she was acting in the “national interest” but she is also looking for common ground with the Americans, as she seeks a deal that secures a reduction in tariffs.
Speaking to US media on Thursday, she reiterated her shared concerns: “I absolutely understand the concerns the United States have about imbalances in trade in the global economy, particularly when it comes to China that runs large, persistent trade surpluses with countries around the world, including the US and indeed including the United Kingdom.”
The IMF too. While the Fund sharply downgrades global growth forecasts, it shied away from openly criticising the US president.
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IMF slashes UK growth forecast
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF’s managing director, spoke of an erosion of trust between countries, and “concerns about the uneven distribution of gains from economic integration, its impact on the international division of labour, supply chain security, and global imbalances”.
So, Mr Trump has got policymakers to shift their priorities.
At the very least, he has brought a long-simmering issue to the boil. The world is thinking differently about China now.
The administration has softened its language, saying it wants reform and to work with institutions.
The president said tariffs could come down substantially on China.
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Day 96: ‘Vladimir STOP!’ Will Trump’s plea to Putin make a difference?
However, a lot of damage has already been done – not only his erratic tariffs policy, but also his attack on institutions, including the US Federal Reserve.
The world is now thinking differently about the US too, as are the markets.
Investors normally dive into US assets – government debt and the dollar – during times of turmoil, but Mr Trump’s pronouncement has caused traders to do the opposite.
There are signs that the world is losing faith in the US’ ultimate safe haven status.