Alec Baldwin said he is not responsible for the death of a 13-year-old boy who was fatally wounded last week by a stray bullet fired outside a Dolores Park hangout where Baldwin and his wife frequently gather to watch art films.
“I have an easy job,” the actor said to reporters Tuesday after speaking to students about creative writing at a New York City high school. “This is how you like me. This is how you like everything about me. If you ask me if I killed someone, I would never, ever do that.”
Baldwin, 58, spoke out after San Francisco police said they were investigating whether he fired the handgun that accidentally discharged and hit Carlos Eduardo Camacho. Police said he was near Baldwin and his wife, Hilaria, when they allegedly argued, and the gun discharged when Camacho hit the ground.
Camacho’s death has drawn national attention after a video of a man in a black shirt arguing with Baldwin and his wife went viral. Baldwin said he did not fire the gun and that he and his wife, an yoga instructor, are both “very loving, kind, considerate people” and will “be OK.”
Baldwin said he and Camacho were at the city’s Contemporary Jewish Museum together with the help of the theater’s staff. “I was sitting down in this seats . . . for a film,” he said. “We were in this movie theater, and Hilaria and I were talking, and a kid came out with a skateboard and kind of scooted it across the theater in front of me.
“So I pushed the TV against the wall and made a comment about that being disrespectful,” he continued. “So the kid and I kind of went at it. And the kid walked away and moved over to the stand-up table. And as he was putting his skateboard on the stand to get it into a stand-up position, the gun went off.”
Baldwin later acknowledged he was trying to defuse the situation. “And the kid just got up and ran away,” he said. “They threw him out, and he said, ‘Baldwin said something about how bad [the skateboarder] skateboard was.’ And everybody was laughing.”
In his statement, Baldwin suggested he was being targeted because of his celebrity status and because people mistakenly believe he is a criminal. “The incident with the young boy in San Francisco last week, who had his head mowed down by a stray bullet, was tragic,” he said. “And, I don’t want to speculate on what might have been the trigger for that violence, but I do want to offer my thoughts and prayers to his family.”