Video apparently taken moments before cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot dead by Alec Baldwin on the set of “Rust” was revealed Monday.
The clip, contained in a trove of documents released by the Santa Fe, New Mexico Sheriff’s Office, was taken by Hutchins on the day of the shooting in a mock church at the Bonanza Creek Ranch. It shows Baldwin, 64, rehearsing a “cross draw” on the set of the doomed Western movie.
With Hutchins behind the camera, Baldwin is shown sitting in a pew and dressed in 1880s-style Western garb as he rehearses whipping out the F.lli Pietta 45 Long Colt Revolver that went off and left the cinematographer dead and the film’s director Joel Souza injured.
The clip, which has no sound but shows Baldwin speaking, cuts off before the shooting as Hutchins turns the camera around to tweak a setting and Baldwin keeps rehearsing.
Cops previously said the actor was practicing the move, which required him to point the gun directly at the camera, in the moments leading up to the shooting. Both Hutchins and Souza were in the line of fire when the revolver went off.
Souza told investigators that he remembered hearing the phrase “cold gun” while preparing for the scene, indicating the firearm wasn’t loaded and was safe for use, but he couldn’t remember if the gun had been checked after the crew returned from a lunch break before the incident.
The director told cops he heard a “loud pop” moments after the shooting and realized both he and Hutchins were bleeding, according to a police interview.
The video is part of a slew of investigative files the sheriff’s office released Monday that details their probe into the fatal mishap.
The records include crime scene photos, body cam footage, staff photos, dash cam footage and other evidence that’s been collected since the incident.
Following a surge of traffic to a Dropbox folder containing the files, the site crashed minutes after it was widely sent out to the media Monday. The documents were inaccessible for about three hours.
The files came back online around 5:30 p.m. ET.
A number of components are still in the process of being collected and were not included in the release, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
That includes FBI firearm and ballistics information, DNA and fingerprint analyses, the medical examiner’s report and the data extracted from Baldwin’s cell phone.
“Once these investigative components are provided to the sheriff’s office we will be able to complete the investigation to forward it to the Santa Fe District Attorney for review,” Sheriff Adan Mendoza said in a statement.
In the days following the shooting, both the district attorney and sheriff said criminal charges for those involved, including Baldwin, were yet to be ruled out. They said they wouldn’t comment further until the investigation is complete.
Baldwin’s attorney, Luke Nikas of Quinn Emanuel, told The Post in a statement that the records release proves the actor’s innocence.
“Mr. Baldwin welcomes this investigation. The information that has been revealed by the authorities demonstrates, once again, that Mr. Baldwin acted responsibly and did not have control over any production issues that were identified in the OSHA report,” Nikas said.
“Additionally, the interviews and affidavits disclosed [Monday] continue to corroborate Mr. Baldwin’s description of the events—including an affidavit from the Detective stating that the cameraman, who was standing next to Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza at the time of the accident, confirmed that Mr. Baldwin was ‘very careful’ with guns on the set.”
