Alec Baldwin slaps phone out of woman's hand after taunting of fatal Rust shooting

A video showing Alec Baldwin knocking a phone out of a woman's hand after being harassed at a New York coffee shop has surfaced online.

The 66-year-old actor was approached by a woman, who confronted him about the fatal shooting on the set of Rust and repeatedly asked him to say "free Palestine" and "f*** Israel."

In the 51-second clip, the woman behind the camera persistently questioned Baldwin about "jail time" as she referred to late cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who died on the set of the western film in 2021 when a gun held by Baldwin discharged a live bullet during rehearsal.

“Alec can you please say free Palestine one time? Why did you kill that lady? You killed that lady and got no jail time? No jail time Alec? No jail time Alec?” the woman behind the camera phone asked.

“Free Palestine Alec, just one time, and I’ll leave you alone? I’ll leave you alone, I swear. Just say free Palestine one time, one time,’” she pressed him. “Please say it, one time. Free Palestine, f**k Zionism, f*** Israel.”

Baldwin then holds the door open, expecting the cameraperson to depart, but she declines. Towards the end of the video, he asks the coffee shop staff if they were going to call the police before knocking the camera out of the woman’s hands.

The Twitter account, Crackhead Barney & Friends, posted the incident online with the caption: “White devil Alec Baldwin attacked me while I was trying to get coffee.”

The Standard has contacted Alec Baldwin’s rep for comment.

The incident comes four months after Baldwin engaged in a heated argument with a pro-Palestine protester who asked him if he "condemned" Israel amid the ongoing Gaza war, in which more than 1,200 Israelis and 30,000 Palestinians – including an estimated 14,500 children – have been killed since the Hamas attack last October 7.

Last week, weapon armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced to 18 months in prison after loading a gun for Baldwin, which fired and killed a cinematographer on the set of western film Rust.

Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter following the shooting of 42-year-old Hutchins at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer of the film, was pointing a gun at Ms Hutchins during a rehearsal when the weapon went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

The actor pleaded not guilty after he was re-charged with involuntary manslaughter in January this year, before lawyers filed to dismiss the charge – a motion of which is yet to be decided. He is currently scheduled to face a trial in July.

A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed in March following a two-week trial, and was sentenced to the maximum 18 months of “incarceration at a New Mexico women’s correctional facility”.

Baldwin was initially charged in January 2023, but those charges were formally dismissed three months later.

Earlier in January 2024, special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in Santa Fe after receiving a new analysis of the gun, and Baldwin was re-charged.

The indictment accuses Baldwin of involuntary manslaughter through negligent use of a firearm, and an alternative charge of involuntary manslaughter “without due caution or circumspection”.

Baldwin previously said he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger, and the gun fired.

Lawyers for Baldwin asked a judge to dismiss the charge, accusing prosecutors of “violating nearly every rule in the book” in acquiring the indictment, while prosecutors claimed the motion to dismiss was “predictable false, misleading, and histrionic misrepresentation of the facts”.

A judge is yet to give a ruling on the motion.

The filming of Rust resumed last year in Montana, under an agreement with the cinematographer’s widower Matthew Hutchins that made him an executive producer.