Story at a glance
- “Rust” armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer said the live bullet was placed in a box with dummy rounds to sabotage filming.
- Hannah Gutierrez-Reed conducted a safety check prior to the shooting with assistant director Dave Halls, who has been the subject of multiple on-set safety complaints.
- Halls told investigators last week that the safety check may not have been carried out thoroughly.
Attorneys for “Rust ” armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed said Wednesday they believe live bullets were intentionally mixed in with dummy ones in the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in a plot to derail filming.
In an interview with NBC “TODAY” show co-host Savannah Guthrie on Wednesday, Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer Jason Bowles said he believed someone on set had added a live bullet to a box of dummy rounds.
“We’re assuming somebody put the live round in that box,” he said. “If you think about that, the person who put the live round in the box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging the set.”
“There’s no other reason that you would do that, that you would mix that live round in with a dummy round,” he added.
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The lawyers acknowledged there is no evidence at this point of foul play, The New York Times reports.
As the film’s armourer, Gutierrez-Reed was tasked with loading the gun fired by actor Alec Baldwin with dummy rounds. A live round was in the revolver that Baldwin shot, fatally wounding Hutchins. She had worked on a set just once before.
“The central question to this case is, how did a live round get on set, and who put that on the set?” Bowles said. “There was a box of dummy rounds, that contains only dummy rounds. Hannah loaded rounds from that box into the handgun.”
Baldwin had been handed the gun by assistant director Dave Halls, who has since come under scrutiny after it was discovered he had been the subject of multiple safety complaints dating back to 2019. Gutierrez-Reed carried out the weapon’s safety check with Halls.
Halls told investigators last week that that safety check may not have been as thorough as it should have, according to an affidavit.
He said Gutierrez-Reed had shown him the gun prior to the shooting and he “could only remember seeing three rounds.” He said he could not remember whether Gutierrez-Reed had spun the drum of the gun to make sure there were no live bullets.
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