'Rust' armorer sues ammunition supplier

Jan. 13—The first lawsuit in New Mexico tied to the fatal shooting on the set of the Rust film production came Wednesday, a complaint filed on behalf of armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed accusing Seth Kenney and his business, PDQ Arm & Prop in Albuquerque, of supplying her with mislabeled dummy ammunition that included live rounds.

The lawsuit, filed in New Mexico's 2nd Judicial District Court in Bernalillo County by Gutierrez Reed's attorneys, Jason Bowles and Todd J. Bullion, describes a "rushed and chaotic" atmosphere on the film set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe that created a "perfect storm" for a safety breach.

Authorities say a prop revolver wielded by Hollywood star and Rust producer Alec Baldwin discharged during an Oct. 21 rehearsal, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.

Gutierrez Reed, hired to handle firearms on the set, has come under intense scrutiny amid an ongoing investigation into the death. According to her complaint, she was paid $7,500 for her dual roles as armorer and key props assistant.

A key question for the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office, which has led the investigation into the shooting, is how live rounds ended up on the set — and in Baldwin's gun.

The agency executed a search warrant in November on Kenney's business, which investigators said had supplied Gutierrez Reed with dummy ammunition for the production. An affidavit for the warrant indicated investigators wondered if the armorer had instead received a deadly mix of live and dummy rounds from the company.

Gutierrez Reed's lawsuit alleges Kenney and his company provided misrepresented ammunition and set the stage for tragedy. The complaint accuses Kenney of violating the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act, creating dangerous conditions, using false and deceptive product labels and breach of contract.

Kenney owes Gutierrez Reed more than $10,000 from an "oral contract" the pair had for her work on The Old Way, a Nicolas Cage film produced in 2021, the complaint says.

It seeks compensatory and punitive damages, court costs and attorneys' fees, and other relief.

The suit says Kenney had access to live rounds with the "Starline Brass" logo — matching the markings on the suspected live rounds found on the Rust set. He had obtained an ammo can with nearly 300 live rounds with that logo from longtime stuntman and armorer Thell Reed, Gutierrez Reed's father, whom he'd asked to train actors at a shooting range for another film in August. When training was over, Kenney took the ammo can back to his home in Albuquerque, the suit says.

"There is no explanation as to where the remainder of the live rounds went or what Seth did with them," the suit says.

Neither Kenney nor his attorney could be reached for comment late Wednesday.

A new box of dummy rounds from Kenney appeared on the Rust set the morning of Oct. 21, according to Gutierrez Reed's complaint. She prepared Baldwin's gun with five dummy rounds; the sixth wouldn't fit into the chamber, the suit says, so she assumed the chamber would need to be cleaned later in the day.

Before lunch, the guns were locked in a safe Gutierrez Reed had purchased for the production, which was placed inside a prop truck. After lunch, Gutierrez Reed cleaned the gun, shook the sixth round and placed it in the chamber, according to the suit.

The rehearsal that day in a church at the movie ranch was "impromptu," the suit says, and Gutierrez Reed was not present in the building.

Assistant director David Halls, who also has faced scrutiny for how he handled Baldwin's weapon on the set, told Gutierrez Reed the revolver would be in the church during the rehearsal, but he would be "sitting in" with it, indicating it wasn't going to be used, according to the complaint.

Fifteen minutes later, Gutierrez Reed heard a gunshot, and she learned Hutchins and Souza had been struck.

When reached for comment Wednesday, Halls' attorney, Lisa Torraco, said she didn't have anything to add to the dialogue in response to the lawsuit. The suit says Gutierrez Reed would never have let Baldwin point the weapon at Hutchins.

The suit details two other accidental discharges on the set. Both occurred Oct. 16, according to the complaint; the first involved prop master Sarah Zachry, who fired a blank round at her foot, and the second involved Baldwin's stunt double, who discharged a round inside a cabin.

Tension over how to respond to the safety concerns began to grow between Kenney and Reed, the suit says.

Following one heated exchange of text messages, Kenney called a police officer in Arizona who was a mutual friend of Gutierrez Reed's father and said he "never wanted to work with Hannah again."

Before Hutchins was pronounced dead, Kenney called the same officer again, the suit says; he claimed Gutierrez Reed had "messed up."

While Kenney and his business are the only defendants in the suit, it also raises questions about the actions of others on set the day of the shooting, including Zachry, who had inspected the ammunition box following the shooting and determined there were other live rounds in it.

Zachry's attorney, William Waggoner, said his client did nothing wrong.

"She did her job. She did it very professionally, and we disagree with [the] description about how chaotic it was on the set," he said in an interview Wednesday night.

Gutierrez Reed's complaint follows separate lawsuits Rust crew members have filed in Los Angeles over the shooting; she is named as one of several defendants in the complaints.