The actor Alec Baldwin and the armourer on the film Rust were charged on Tuesday with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of the movie’s cinematographer, according to court papers, filed in the First Judicial District Court in New Mexico, in which prosecutors accused them of failing to follow standard film safety protocols on set.

In a statement of probable cause against Baldwin filed in the court, Robert Shilling, a special investigator for the district attorney’s office, outlined the ways prosecutors claim that the actor had behaved negligently on set. They accused him of not receiving sufficient training on firearms, of failing to deal with safety complaints on set, of “putting his finger on the trigger of a real firearm when a replica or rubber gun should have been used” and of pointing the firearm at the film’s cinematographer and director.

“This reckless deviation from known standards and practice and protocol directly caused the fatal shooting,” Shilling wrote.

The prosecutors in the case announced on January 19 that both the film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and Baldwin would face criminal charges in the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. They will not be arrested, prosecutors said, unless they do not cooperate with their scheduled court hearings.

Baldwin has said that he was told the gun was “cold”, meaning it should have contained no live rounds, and added that he was following the direction of Hutchins in where to point the gun.

He has said that he did not pull the trigger, and that the gun discharged after he pulled the hammer back and released it.

New York Times News Service