Armourer breaks her silence on movie-set shooting: Safety was lax. It’s not my fault
The armourer who loaded the gun with which A l e c Ba l d w i n fatally shot a cinematographer broke her silence yesterday to blame producers for unsafe working conditions.
Hannah Gutierrez- Reed’s lawyers said she had no idea how a live round got in the gun, or what it was doing on the set of the Western film Rust. The 24-year-old armourer claimed she had been required to do two jobs while making the movie, and that there was a lack of safety meetings.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died and director Joel Souza was injured when Baldwin fired the gun, unaware it contained a live round, on the set in New Mexico 10 days ago.
Yesterday, in a statement, Gutierrez-reed’s lawyers said: “This set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from.”
There have been reports that the gun may have been used by crew members for target practice with live rounds when not filming. But the statement said GutierrezReed and the prop master had “control over the guns and she never witnessed anyone shoot live rounds with these guns, and nor would she permit that”.
It added that she was “devastated and completely beside herself” over the death of Hutchins.
Adan Mendoza, the Santa Fe county sheriff, has said there was “some complacency” in how weapons were handled on the set.
Investigators found 500 rounds of ammunition – a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what appeared to be live rounds. Industry experts have said live rounds should never be on set.
The lawyers, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, said that, in addition to being the armourer, Gutierrez-reed had been required to do another job on the set, dividing her time. They said: “Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armourer.
“She fought for training days to maintain weapons, and proper time to prepare for gunfire, but ultimately was overruled by production and her department.”
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, six individuals have producer credits on Rust, including Alec Baldwin and his manager, Matt Delpiano.
Film industry sources say safety measures on sets are being increasingly ignored amid attempts to keep costs down. The resumption of filming following the
pandemic shutdown, and a huge demand for new content from online streaming channels have also put pressure on production companies to finish films quickly.
Gutierrez-reed told detectives the revolver was loaded with dummy bullets. She checked them to make sure none was “hot”. When the crew broke for lunch, guns being used for filming were locked in a safe inside a truck. However, ammunition was left unsecured on a cart. After lunch, the prop master removed the guns and handed them to GutierrezReed, who told police she set three guns on a cart outside a church where a scene was being rehearsed. Dave Halls, the assistant director, took one of the guns from the cart and handed it to Baldwin.
The actor was preparing to film a scene in which he pulls a gun out of a holster, according to a source close to the production. Crew members had already shouted “cold gun” on the set. The film- making team was lining up its camera angles and had yet to retreat to the video village, an on-set area where the crew gathers to watch filming from a distance via a monitor.
Instead, the B- camera operator was on a dolly with a monitor, checking out the potential shots. Hutchins was also looking at the monitor from over the operator’s shoulder, as was the movie’s director, Joel Souza, who was crouching just behind her.
Baldwin removed the gun from its holster once without incident, but the second time he did so, ammunition flew toward the trio around the monitor. The projectile whizzed by the camera operator but penetrated Hutchins near her shoulder, then continued through to Souza.
Hutchins fell to the ground as crew members applied pressure to her wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding.