Friend who held Halyna Hutchins as she died sues Alec Baldwin
The chief electrician on the film Rust is suing Alec Baldwin and members of the crew and production team, claiming he is suffering “severe emotional distress” following the death of Halyna Hutchins.
Serge Svetnoy was inside the church set when Hutchins was shot by Baldwin, standing just feet from the actor. He described being hit with bullet fragments before cradling the dying cinematographer, whom he had known for several years, for more than 20 minutes before an ambulance arrived.
“What a terrible tragedy and injustice when a person loses her life on a film set while making art,” Svetnoy said.
It is the first lawsuit filed over the incident on 21 October which resulted in the death of 42-year-old Hutchins. It also contains the fresh allegation that the scene which was being rehearsed did not actually require Baldwin to pull the trigger.
“I did not expect it,” Svetnoy told Sky News, “nobody expected it.”
Halyna Hutchins is pictured with her back to the camera wearing the white hat, facing Alec Baldwin Pic: Serge Svetnoy/Facebook
In the court documents, Svetnoy, who – like Hutchins – is originally from Ukraine – added: “This duty called for Defendant Baldwin to double-check the Colt Revolver upon being handled to ensure that it did not contain live ammunition.”
Svetnoy went on to claim that if Baldwin knew the gun was loaded with a real bullet, he had another duty to “refrain from pointing it at anyone”.
The 63-year-old has made what is called a general-negligence complaint which names the producers including Baldwin, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed and others.
“When you have millionaire and multimillionaire producers putting their money and their profits before safety and human life, that must be punished, that must be stopped,” his lawyer Gary Dordick said, adding that Svetnoy was seeking general and punitive damages.
“Alec Baldwin was sued for punitive damages because when a gun, a real gun, was given to him on the set, he assumed it was safe,” Dordick added. “He took a gun, loaded with a bullet, pointed it at human being and pulled the trigger and shot the bullet that killed people.”
The lawsuit comes just a week after 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 the fatal shooting, citing concerns over gun safety and the welfare of crew.
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‘I’ve never felt more unsafe on set’ – ex-Rust camera chief
Lawyers for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed who, as the armourer, was in charge of guns on set have doubled down on the claim that sabotage was the reason for live ammunition being in the gun handed to Alec Baldwin.
“We eagerly await the FBI’s investigation of all the facts including the live rounds themselves, how they ended up in the ‘dummies box’ and who put them there,” they said in a statement. “We are convinced that this was sabotage and Hannah is being framed. We believe that the scene was tampered with as well before the police arrived.”
But Gary Dordick, representing Mr Svetnoy said the idea of sabotage was “totally unbelievable” to him. “What they’re really saying is that it was murder,” he told Sky News, “that they put a bullet in a gun knowing it was going to be fired at someone. That seems specious, that seems suspect.”
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was the armourer on the set of Rust. File pic: Shutterstock
In a statement, the producers of Rust, including Alec Baldwin, said: “The safety of our cast and crew is the top priority of Rust Productions and everyone associated with the company.
“Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down.
“We will continue to cooperate with the Santa Fe authorities in their investigation and offer mental health services to the cast and crew during this tragic time.”
US
Voyager 1: NASA’s longest-running spacecraft back in touch with Earth after five months of silence
NASA’s longest-running spacecraft Voyager 1 is sending information back to Earth again for the first time since November.
Scientists have managed to fix a problem on the probe, which was launched 46 years ago, after five months of silence.
On 14 November last year, Voyager 1 stopped sending usable data back to Earth, even though scientists could tell it was still receiving their commands and working well otherwise.
It was first launched alongside its twin, Voyager 2. The pair are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space, which is the space between stars.
The Voyager probes send back never-seen-before information about our galaxy. Since they blasted off in 1977, they have revealed details in Saturn’s rings, provided the first in-depth images of the rings of Uranus and Neptune and discovered the rings of Jupiter.
A picture of Saturn taken by the Voyager spacecrafts in the 1980s. Pic: NASA
Although their cameras are switched off to conserve power and memory, they are still sending back information that would be impossible to get anywhere else.
With all this data stuck onboard and the spacecraft more than 15 billion miles from Earth, NASA scientists needed to fix the problem remotely.
The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed in March that the issue was with one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computers. That computer, called the flight data subsystem, is responsible for packaging the data up before it is sent back to Earth.
Within the computer, a single chip containing some of the computer’s software code had stopped working. Without that code, the data was unusable.
The engineers couldn’t pop over and fix it. Instead, on 18 April, they remotely split the code across different parts of the computer.
A picture of Jupiter taken by the Voyager spacecrafts. Pic: NASA
Then they had to wait to see if their fix had worked.
It takes around 22-and-a-half hours for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 22-and-a-half hours for a response to come back.
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On 20 April, the team got good news. For the first time in five months, they were in contact with Voyager 1 again and could check the health and status of the spacecraft.
Now, they’ll adjust the rest of the computer so it can begin sending back more data.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Voyager 2 is working normally and heading towards a star called Ross 248. It’ll come within 1.7 light years of it in around 40,000 years.
Voyager 1 will almost reach a star in the Little Dipper constellation in 38,200 years from now.
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