"Rust" script supervisor Mamie Mitchell on Wednesday sued Alec Baldwin along with the producers and crew of the film after a fatal shooting that took place on the set last month. File Photo by Jason Szenes/UPI |
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Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Script supervisor Mamie Mitchell on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Alec Baldwin, and other producers and crew members for the film Rust following the fatal on-set shooting last month.
The lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court accuses the defendants of assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She said Baldwin was not required to discharge the firearm that shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchinson and injured director Joel Souza.
"Alec Baldwin intentionally, without just cause or excuse, cocked and fired the loaded gun even though the upcoming scene to be filmed did not call for the cocking and firing of the firearm," the lawsuit states. "Mr. Baldwin chose to play Russian roulette with a loaded gun without checking it and without having the armorer do so."
During a press conference in Los Angeles alongside her attorney, Gloria Allred, Mitchell recalled she had been watching Baldwin practicing a move with the gun on the New Mexico set, while holding her script and checking photos to ensure Baldwin was dressed in the correct attire for the scene when she heard "a deafening, loud gunshot."
"I was stunned. I heard someone moaning and I turned around and my director was falling backward and holding his upper body," she said.
Mitchell then saw Hutchins fall to the ground and ran out of the wooden church set as she called 911 on her cellphone.
In addition to Baldwin, who starred in and produced the film, the suit names the film's other producers and production companies, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, first assistant director David Halls, property master Sarah Zachry and others as defendants.
"The fact that live ammunition was allowed on a movie set, that guns and ammunition were left unattended, that the gun in question was handed to Mr. Baldwin by the assistant director who had no business doing so, the fact that safety bulletins were not promulgated or ignored, coupled with the fact that the scene in question did not call for a gun to be fired at all, makes this a case where injury or death was much more than just a possibility -- it was a likely result," the suit said.
Last week, the film's gaffer, Serge Svetnoy, also filed a lawsuit against Baldwin, the producers and crew after he held a dying Hutchinson and alleges he was injured by discharge materials from the shooting.