Alec Baldwin’s Rust accident: Hollywood’s history of on-set tragedies

A cinematographer being killed on Alec Baldwin’s latest movie sent shockwaves around the world – but it’s not the first tragedy of its kind.

The shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie Rust is a haunting reminder of what can go wrong on set.

Local authorities said the 42-year-old and director Joel Souza were shot on Thursday on the film set in the desert on the southern outskirts of Santa Fe.

Authorities confirmed that a prop firearm discharged by Baldwin, 63, killed Hutchins and wounded Souza, 48.

Hutchins was flown to the University of New Mexico Hospital, where she was pronounced dead by medical personnel, the sheriff’s department said. Souza was taken by ambulance to Christus St Vincent Regional Medical Centre and has since been released.

Hutchins who was accidentally shot and killed on the set of Rust.

Production was halted on the film.

As authorities investigate the tragedy, industry leaders will look for ways to avoid similar tragedies. On-set fatalities have led to safety reform in the past. Here are some of the most devastating accidents from over the years.

Twilight Zone: The Movie

In 1982, actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, Renee Shinn Chen and Myca Dinh Le, were killed while filming a scene set in Vietnam for a film based on the hit TV series, Twilight Zone. The helicopter came down after debris from explosions staged during the scene rose 30m into the air and damaged the aircraft’s rotor.

In a rare case of prosecutors targeting a film production for on-set deaths, director John Landis and four others were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter charges. The families of the child actors settled civil lawsuits years later, and federal agencies enacted new rules for filming with helicopters.

The helicopter crash that killed Vic Morrow and two children during the filming of Twilight Zone.

Cover Up

In 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum, 26, was killed on the set of his TV series Cover Up after he accidentally shot himself in the head with a gun loaded with blanks. His mother Gretha Hexum filed a wrongful-death suit against Twentieth Century Fox Television and Glenn Larson Productions in Superior Court. In the suit, she said her son should have been warned about the dangers of blank cartridges. A few years later, Gretha won an undisclosed out-of-court settlement.

Jon-Erik Hexum was an American actor and model.

The Crow

In 1993, actor Brandon Lee – son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee – died after he was shot in the abdomen while filming a scene for The Crow. The gun was supposed to have fired a blank, but an autopsy turned up a bullet lodged near his spine.

Money and safety issues, including severe burns suffered by a construction worker, had already plagued the production. A makeshift bullet was mistakenly left in a gun from a previous scene and struck Lee during a scene that called for using blank rounds.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined the production $84,000 for violations found after Lee’s death, but the fine was later reduced to $55,000. The Crow grossed more than $50 million. Before the Rust tragedy, Lee’s death was the last recorded accidental death by a prop gun on a movie set.

Brandon Lee in a scene from The Crow.

Untitled Military Project

In 2013, an early morning helicopter crash in a remote river valley north of Los Angeles killed three people filming a planned reality TV series for the Discovery Channel. The filming took place on a moonless night, and the pilot wasn’t wearing night-vision goggles at the time of the crash.

Federal investigators later determined that a light used to illuminate an actor’s face in the cockpit hampered the pilot’s ability to fly. However, the National Transportation Safety Board faulted the pilot, who was among those killed, for flying in unsafe conditions. The agency later rescinded its determination that a Federal Aviation Administration inspector failed to recognise the risks involved when he approved plans for the shoot.

Midnight Rider

In 2014, camera operator Sarah Jones was run over by a train during the filming of a Gregg Allman biopic in rural Georgia. The death of Jones, 27, and the injuries of other crew members hit by pieces of a metal bed frame that was on the train tracks as part of the production, put a heightened industry focus on film set safety.

Staff shooting Midnight Rider were forced to jump out of the way as a train approached.

The crew filming Midnight Rider did not have permission to be on the tracks. They were also not expecting a train while filming the bed scene. Consequently, prosecutors filed criminal charges against the film’s director, who pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing charges. He was sentenced to two years in jail but released after a year and fined $74,900 by OSHA. Jones’ parents created a foundation dedicated to improving safety on film and television shoots.

Richard and Elizabeth Jones attend a memorial for their daughter Sarah Jones, an assistant camera operator who was killed by a train while shooting Midnight Rider. Picture: David McNew/Getty Images

Cops

In 2014, an audio technician recording a police shootout for the long-running TV reality series Cops was struck and killed in Omaha, Nebraska. The death of Boston native Bryce Dion prompted the OSHA to recommend additional training and safety instruction for the show’s crew members, including on how to film shootings from farther away. OSHA also recommended removing bonus incentives that encourage workers to take risks to capture more action-packed stories.

This article originally appeared in Fox News and was reproduced with permission