A newly completed forensics investigation by the FBI says that the weapon actor Alec Baldwin was holding in his hand at the moment of the tragic incident could not have been fired without squeezing the trigger.
According to the report which has been made available to the media, with the hammer - the part of the gun that strikes the firing pin - in the quarter and half-cock positions, the gun "could not have been made to fire without a pull of the trigger".
The findings of the investigation were later reviewed by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, and in a further post-mortem report Hutchins' death was declared an accident.
Baldwin accidentally shot cinematographer Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza on the set of the movie 'Rust' in October 2021. During interviews with police, the actor said he believed that the weapon he had been handed was an unloaded "cold gun". He said that "someone else" was responsible for the fatal shooting. "I know it's not me," Baldwin said.