LOS ANGELES (AFP) – The girl in control of the gun fatally fired by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of Rust advised police she “did not actually verify it an excessive amount of” instantly earlier than the tragedy.
Ms Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, armourer on the low-budget Western, spoke to investigators as they probed how dwell rounds ended up on the New Mexico movie set in October, resulting in the dying of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
Hutchins, 42, was shot and killed as Baldwin rehearsed a scene during which he fires a gun on the digicam.
Based on an affidavit launched on Tuesday (Nov 30), Ms Gutierrez-Reed advised police she had loaded the Colt .45 with 5 dummy rounds earlier than a lunch break.
After lunch, the weapon was retrieved from a protected and he or she added a last spherical earlier than handing it to a different crew member. Moments later, she heard a gun shot from contained in the set.
Ms Gutierrez-Reed mentioned she “did not actually verify it an excessive amount of” as a result of the weapon had been locked up at lunch.
“We had the gun the entire time earlier than that, and nothing occurred, and I wasn’t in there, and so they weren’t even imagined to be pulling the hammer again,” she added.
Police seized greater than 500 rounds of ammunition from the set, which they believed to be a mixture of blanks, dummy rounds and a few suspected dwell ammunition.
On Tuesday, investigators shared new details about the potential origin of dwell rounds.
Ammunition for the manufacturing got here from a number of sources, together with Mr Seth Kenney, an Arizona weapon rental provider.
Mr Kenney advised investigators he could have handed “reloaded ammunition” to the Rust set which matched the brand on a cartridge suspected to have contained the dwell spherical that killed Halyna.
“Reloaded ammunition” refers to rounds which are assembled from part elements, not manufactured as full dwell rounds.
Ms Gutierrez-Reed’s father Thell Reed, a veteran armourer, mentioned he had supplied dwell ammo to Mr Kenney on a earlier movie they labored on collectively that was “not manufacturing facility made”, and which was by no means returned.
Prosecutors have refused to rule out legal expenses in opposition to any individual concerned with Rust, together with Baldwin and Ms Gutierrez-Reed.
The pair are additionally amongst these named in a minimum of two civil lawsuits filed by different crew members.
Ms Gutierrez-Reed has mentioned she has “no concept” why dwell rounds had been current, and her attorneys steered an act of “sabotage” by disgruntled crew members could have brought about the tragic taking pictures.
Experiences have emerged of disquiet amongst workers over allegedly lax security procedures, and Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza has spoken of “complacency” on the New Mexico set.
However Baldwin, 63, has known as the tragedy a “one in a trillion episode” and insisted Rust had a “well-oiled crew”.
