Rust armorer accuses ammunition supplier of providing a 'mix of dummy and live' rounds
The armorer on the Alec Baldwin movie Rust is placing blame on the ammunition supplier as an investigation into the fatal on-set shooting continues.
Attorneys for Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer on Rust, have filed a lawsuit against weapons supplier Seth Kenney and PDQ Arm and Prop, the company he founded, for allegedly creating "a dangerous condition on the movie set" by providing "boxes of ammunition purporting to contain dummy rounds, but which contained a mix of dummy and live ammunition," CBS News and CNN report.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on the film set in October after a gun discharged during rehearsal for a scene, and since then, investigators have been examining how live ammunition ended up on set. Gutierrez Reed's attorneys previously claimed she had "no idea where the live rounds came from," and they suggested someone may have sabotaged the set. Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies rejected that notion.
Kenney told Good Morning America last month he's confident that PDQ Arm and Prop did not provide live rounds to the Rust set, saying, "It's not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally. When we send dummy rounds out, they get individually rattle tested before they get sent out." Gutierrez Reed's lawsuit, though, alleges "Hannah and the entire Rust movie crew relied on the defendants' misrepresentation that they provided only dummy ammunition," and the defendants "knew or should have reasonably believed that the ammunition they supplied to the Rust production would be used in the filming of scenes involving the discharging of firearms," The New York Times reports.
The lawsuit also alleges Gutierrez Reed asked assistant director Dave Halls to let her know when Baldwin came back to the set so she could re-inspect the weapon but Halls failed to do so, and she "would never have let Baldwin point the weapon at Halyna, as part of standard safe gun practices."
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