What we know about the victims of the Alec Baldwin Rust shooting

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died on Thursday (21 October) after actor Alec Baldwin misfired a prop gun on a film set in New Mexico.

Hutchins was transported to the University of New Mexico hospital where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel. She was 42 at the time.

The film’s director, Joel Souza, was also injured in the shooting. He is currently undergoing treatment at a local hospital where he is reportedly in emergency care.

Alec Baldwin shooting – update: Actor fatally shoots cinematographer and injures director with prop gun

There has been an outpouring of grief on social media, as Hutchins’s friends and colleagues paid tribute to her.

Director Adam Egypt Mortimer, who worked with Hutchins on the 2020 superhero mystery-thriller Archenemy, tweeted: “I’m so sad about losing Halyna. And so infuriated that this could happen on a set. She was a brilliant talent who was absolutely committed to art and to film.”

Mortimer has previously said that Hutchins’s tastes and sensibility of what is cinematic were a huge asset for the Archenemy project.

Her other film credits included Michael Nell’s racially-charged police drama Blindfire, Cate Devaney’s horror movie The Mad Hatter, Adriana González-Vega’s To the New Girl and The Walking Dead actor Pollyanna McIntosh’s horror film Darlin’.

Born in Ukraine in 1979, Hutchins grew up in a Soviet camp in the Arctic Circle “surrounded by reindeer and nuclear submarines”. She graduated from the Kyiv National University with a degree in international journalism.

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Hutchins worked as an investigative journalist on British documentary productions in Europe for a while, before she relocated to Los Angeles.

An alumni of the American Film Institute Conservatory, Hutchins was recognised as one of American Cinematography magazine’s “rising stars” in 2019.

Hutchins’s friend and fellow cinematographer Elle Schneider called Hutchins a “rising star” in a tweet.

“Halyna was shooting the Western Rust when she died,” Schneider wrote. “Women cinematographers have historically been kept from genre film, and it seems especially cruel that one of the rising stars who was able to break through had her life cut short on the kind of project we’ve been fighting for.”

Hutchins posted a photograph from the set of Rust one day before her death. She also shared a video of herself, enjoying her day off, horse-riding on the same day.

Rust director Souza made his feature debut in 2019 with the R-rated police drama Crown Vic.

The 48-year-old filmmaker is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lives with his wife and two children.

Baldwin was filming the forthcoming Western at Bonanza Creek Ranch, a popular filming location south of Santa Fe, when the tragic incident occurred.

Written by Souza, Rust also stars Travis Fimmel, Brady Noon, Frances Fisher and Jensen Ackles.

According to a Deadline report, the 63-year-old actor was questioned by investigators and released.

An official from the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department told the publication that no arrests or charges have been filed.