“How did a live round get on set, and who put that live round on the set?” Those are the questions armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney is asking following the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins.
As Mamas Uncut previously reported, Hutchins passed away while on the set of Alec Baldwin’s latest movie Rust. Hutchins was the cinematographer for the western.
RELATED: Halyna Hutchins’ Last Words Revealed After She Was Shot By Alec Baldwin On Set
Hutchins tragically died when the prop gun Alec Baldwin was handed by assistant director David Halls fired a live bullet instead of the blank that was supposed to be in the gun. The bullet struck Hutchins in the chest and then director Joel Souza in the shoulder.
As it has been reported multiple times, the person who stocked the cart with the prop weapon was the armorer for the movie, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. She and Halls were tasked with making sure the prop guns were “cold” before bringing them on set.
Live rounds are never supposed to be anywhere near a movie set. And now Gutierrez-Reed’s attorneys are asking how one got in the gun in the first place.
Attorneys for Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Are Suspecting She Was Sabotaged
During an interview with the Today Show, attorney Jason Bowles said, ”There was a box of dummy rounds labeled ‘dummy.’ We don’t know whether the live round came from that box. We’re assuming somebody put the live round in that box.”
While Bowles had no physical proof that his client was framed, Bowles continued to say that because some of the crew members walked off set earlier that day, the working theory is that somebody would maybe “want to sabotage the set, want to prove a point, want to say they’re disgruntled, they’re unhappy” may have put a live round or live rounds in the box of blanks.
The attorneys also said that the guns used on set were left unattended for two hours the day the accident occurred. However, they later backtracked on that statement and revealed that the guns had been locked in a safe and accounted for all day except for one 10 minute window.
The incident that left Halyna Hutchins dead and Alec Baldwin holding the smoking gun was the only accidental discharge on set.
As NBC News reported, those crew members who walked off the set that day did so due to “lacking safety measures. In an email, Lane Luper, the A-camera first assistant, revealed that she quit because the safety procedures were “fast and loose” when filming gunfights for the movie.
In the same email, Luper revealed that there were two accidental weapon discharges on the Rust set. It’s assumed no one was hurt on set during those additional incidences.
In an additional statement, the armorer’s attorney’s said, “Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer. She fought for training, days to maintain weapons, and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department. The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings.”
However, sources claim this is a normal workload for armorers on sets. Gutierrez-Reed was reportedly not present for the fatal shooting.
As Mamas Uncut previously reported, affidavits revealed that the prop gun given to Baldwin was used in target practice earlier that day. And because of that, protocol requires the armorer and the assistant director to double-check the guns to ensure no live rounds were left inside the firearms.
In a report by the Los Angeles Times, an affidavit revealed that the armorer was reported telling investigators that she did ensure “the ammunition intended for production were ‘dummies’ and did not include ‘hot’ rounds.” Gutierrez-Reed also was recorded telling investigators that live ammo was “never” kept on set.
But on October 27, investigators reported recovering upwards of “500 rounds of ammunition from the set,” which included “a mixture of ‘blanks, dummy rounds and what we are suspecting were live rounds,’” Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters.
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