New Mexico authorities investigating the fatal on-set shooting by Alec Baldwin are expected to offer their first public update on the case on Wednesday.
A press conference is scheduled for 10am local time (12pm EST) and will be livestreamed here on the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Facebook page.
Officials from the sheriff’s department and the Santa Fe County District Attorney’s Office are expected to speak at the conference.
It comes almost a week after Mr Baldwin fired a prop gun on the set of his forthcoming film Rust, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Mary Carmack-Altwies, the top prosecutor on the case, said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday that criminal charges are still possible because she “hadn’t ruled anything out”.
Ms Carmack-Altwies said investigators were focusing on ballistics to determine what kind of round had killed Ms Hutchins and who had placed the ammunition in the gun.
She said a search warrant executed on the set of the Bonanza Creek Ranch found an “enormous amount of bullets on this set” as well as three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition.
“We need to find out what kinds they were,” she said.
Ms Carmack-Altwies said it would be “weeks, if not months, of follow-up investigation that we’re going to need to get to the point of charging”.
Mr Baldwin fired the weapon on 21 October when he pointed it at the camera while practising a “cross draw” technique inside a church, according to a court affidavit.
The gun had been placed on a cart outside the church by the movie’s armourer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, and was handed to Mr Baldwin by assistant director Dave Halls.
Mr Halls said it was a “cold gun,” indicating it did not contain live rounds.
It later emerged that Mr Halls had been fired from a film in 2019 after a prop gun accidentally fired on the set of the movie Freedom’s Path, injuring a crew member.
Ms Carmack-Altwies said investigators were still conducting interviews with witnesses to determine who could be at fault for the shooting.
