Alec Baldwin Seen on Video Rehearsing With Gun Before Fatal Shooting on ‘Rust’

The footage is one of dozens of videos and other images released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office. The files were released Monday in response to public records requests by media outlets. They include body-camera footage from sheriff’s deputies responding to the incident and investigators’ interviews with key witnesses as well as text message exchanges.

Video from a deputy’s body camera shows a chaotic scene in the moments after the shooting. Emergency responders attempted to save Ms. Hutchins as she lay quietly on the floor of the set’s Old West church. Nearby, Mr. Souza, also on the ground, groaned in pain. Deputies told crew members to stay out of the church because it was a crime scene. Ms. Hutchins was put into an ambulance as a medical helicopter landed nearby.

A shaken-looking Mr. Baldwin sat outside the church and asked someone for a cigarette, the released video shows. He asked if Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza had been taken away for treatment and told a deputy he didn’t know how many people were in the church when the shooting occurred.

In an interview with sheriff’s investigators after the shooting and released Monday, Mr. Baldwin said he wanted to know what the projectile was that fired from the gun. “What’s in Joel’s shoulder, is it a rock or is it a bullet?” he said. Investigators told him it was a bullet.

“Somebody put a live round in the gun,” Mr. Baldwin said. “If that’s a bullet that was pulled out of his shoulder, then someone loaded a live round into the gun I was holding.

“I rehearsed with a hot gun,” he said. “It was supposed to be cold or empty…This is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

After answering several questions about how ammunition and guns are handled on set, investigators then told Mr. Baldwin that Ms. Hutchins had died. Mr. Baldwin froze in silence with his hand covering his mouth.

In a subsequent phone conversation with Detective Alexandria Hancock, Mr. Baldwin said repeatedly that he never pulled the trigger.

“My finger was on the trigger, but I didn’t pull the trigger. I pulled the hammer back partially,” he said. He added that when he let the hammer go, that was when “the round went off.”

Detective Hancock said that it was a normal function to pull the trigger once the hammer is cocked, but Mr. Baldwin said he practiced not doing so.

Mr. Baldwin’s lawyer, Luke Nikas said in a statement that Mr. Baldwin welcomes this investigation and said that the new releases demonstrate that Mr. Baldwin acted responsibly.

Sheriff’s investigators haven’t yet completed their probe into the Oct. 21 shooting, which includes determining how live rounds ended up on the set. Investigators have interviewed a range of people involved in the movie, including Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer in charge of guns on set, assistant director David Halls and Seth Kenney, the film’s weapons supplier.

Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said several components of the investigation are pending, “including FBI firearm and ballistic forensics along with DNA and latent fingerprint analysis, Office of the New Mexico Medical Examiner findings report and the analysis of Mr. Alec Baldwin’s phone data.”

Text messages also released from the sheriff’s office Monday shed light on how crew workers responded immediately following the shooting and in the subsequent days. In one message sent three days after the shooting, Sarah Zachry, the prop master on “Rust,” commented on how Mr. Baldwin preferred to use real guns and props on set, and referenced a time he didn’t want to act with a “rubber knife.”

“He always wanted his real gun,” she said in a message to an acquaintance who didn’t work on the film.

Two days after the shooting, Ms. Zachry texted Mr. Kenney, according to the released material, “I talked to Alec, and he’s having a difficult time recalling things like most of us.”

Ms. Zachry also texted with Mr. Baldwin directly in the days following the shooting.

“The sheriff’s dept still will not tell me that I won’t be charged w something,” Mr. Baldwin texted Ms. Zachry on Dec. 2. “But they seem to be getting very close to the truth of what happened.”

Ms. Zachry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another text message exchange released Monday between Ms. Gutierrez Reed and Mr. Kenney from when she worked on a different movie, shows Ms. Gutierrez Reed talking about wanting to use live rounds. While working on a movie called “The Old Way” in August 2021, she asks Mr. Kenney if she can “shoot hot rounds out of the trap door…like a pretty big load of actual ammunition.”

Mr. Kenney in response warned her to never shoot live ammunition and only use blanks. “It’s a serious mistake, always ends in tears,” Mr. Kenney texted. Ms. Gutierrez Reed replied: “Good to know, I’m still gonna shoot mine tho.”

Sheriff Mendoza said in an interview with the Journal on Monday that Ms. Gutierrez Reed’s previous conversations about wanting to use live rounds on “The Old Way” raised concerns about her handling of firearms on “Rust.”

“It was a different movie set, but it was including some people that did work and played a role in the ‘Rust’ movie set. So those actions are concerning,” he said.

Jason Bowles, an attorney for Ms. Gutierrez Reed, said Monday that during filming of “The Old Way,” Ms. Gutierrez Reed had wanted to fire a special historical gun, away from the movie set when she was off work, but never fired it. “As armorer, she wanted to be familiar with the historical weapon and how it operated but never intended on shooting during production or on set.” He said she has never brought live rounds on set or fired live rounds on set.

In written summaries released Monday of an interview with investigators after the “Rust” shooting, Ms. Gutierrez Reed said one morning, she had planned to work with Mr. Baldwin on using guns, but when he showed up, he didn’t say anything about a lesson. She told other crew members she was concerned “about him practicing because of the draw with the holster,” according to a summary.

At one point, Mr. Baldwin got mad when he tried to draw the gun and it got caught on his microphone, Ms. Gutierrez Reed told the investigators. She reached out to Mr. Baldwin’s assistant to get him additional training, “to which she didn’t hear much back other than he would speak with Alec,” according to the interview summary.

An attorney for Mr. Kenney didn’t comment on the releases.

Mr. Bowles has previously said that no one on the set had told Ms. Gutierrez Reed that Mr. Baldwin was doing an impromptu scene rehearsal with the gun, and that she should have been informed so she could have inspected the gun again.

According to a report released last week by state workplace safety inspectors, Ms. Gutierrez Reed wasn’t given proper authority to determine whether gun training was needed, or time to thoroughly inspect ammunition.

Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney for the Santa Fe area, said in a statement Monday that no decision will be made on criminal charges until the Sheriff’s Office completes its investigation and turns over its findings to her office.

Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com, Katherine Sayre at katherine.sayre@wsj.com and Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com