Weeks after police obtained a search warrant for Alec Baldwin’s cell phone, the 63-year-old actor has finally handed over the device to the investigators who are looking into the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the movie Rust.
As we previously reported, police issued a search warrant to seize the phone last month in connection to the case. However, the 30 Rock alum came under fire after reports dropped that he still had not yet turned over the device to authorities. Baldwin soon addressed the issue in a video on Instagram, maintaining that he was fully cooperating with the investigation and the process to fulfill the search warrant was just complicated:
“Any suggestion that I am not complying with requests or orders or demands or search warrants about my phone, that’s bulls**t, that’s a lie.”
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Still, authorities seemingly were done waiting around and amped up the pressure on the star in a press release on Thursday, accusing him of still not complying and handing the cell over.
But now, Variety reports that he officially gave the device to law enforcement in Suffolk County on Friday. Investigators will now retrieve any relevant evidence for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office and hopefully find information about the production that will piece together what happened in the days leading up to when Baldwin accidentally shot and killed the director of photography. However, the sheriff’s office noted that the detectives “does not yet have physical possession of the data to be retrieved off the Baldwin phone,” and that it is “in progress.”
His civil attorney Aaron Dyer also confirmed the news in a statement to the outlet – but claimed it doesn’t matter since there were “no answers on his phone” in the first place. He said:
“Alec voluntarily provided his phone to the authorities this morning so they can finish their investigation. But this matter isn’t about his phone, and there are no answers on his phone. Alec did nothing wrong. It is clear that he was told it was a cold gun, and was following instructions when this tragic accident occurred. The real question that needs to be answered is how live rounds got on the set in the first place.”
That certainly has been the biggest mystery throughout this investigation. Plenty of finger-pointing at a few specific people, mainly Baldwin, head armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and first assistant director Dave Halls, has happened over the past couple of months. Most recently, the 24-year-old armorer called out Seth Kenney, the owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, who supplied the guns and ammo used on the production, in a lawsuit. She claimed he falsely said the ammo boxes on the set only contained dummy rounds when it had a mix of dummy and live bullets.
We’ll have to wait and see if police end up finding out anything new about the tragic accident on Baldwin’s phone.
[Image via MEGA/WENN]
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