Photo: DAVID MCNEW / AFP / Getty Images
The weapons supervisor in the movie “Rust,” in which the cinematographer was killed after a gun held by the actor Alec Baldwin shot himself during rehearsal, he has no idea where the real bullet came from, he said.
Hannah Gutierrez Reed , the gunsmith hired for the shoot in which Alec Baldwin accidentally killed Halyna Hutchins, blamed the film’s producers for not paying attention to their safety recommendations .
A week after the fatal accident, the gunsmith’s lawyers sent a letter to the media in which claimed that Gutierrez Reed “has no idea” of the origin of the authentic bullets that the investigators have located in the studio where the movie “Rust” was filmed.
“Safety was Hannah’s number one priority. (…) This shooting would never have been compromised if live ammunition had not been introduced. Hannah has no idea where the bullets came from, ”said her attorneys, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence.
According to the brief, 24 years is “devastated and completely beside herself” by the event.
Gutierrez Reed is a person of special interest in the investigation being carried out by the Santa Fe, New Mexico Sheriff’s Office, as he is one of the two people who handled the weapon before it came into the hands of Baldwin .
The other, the assistant director Dave Halls , admitted on Wednesday that he did not correctly review the pistol before handing it to the actor during the rehearsal of a scene in which he had to shoot at the camera.
However, Gutierrez Reed defended his work and recalled that the film’s producers ignored their requests for the rest of the team to hold training sessions.
“She struggled to have training days to hold weapons and to have the time adequate to prepare for the shooting, but they were eventually rejected by the producers, ”the statement said.
“The entire set was made unsafe due to various factors, including a lack of security measures. No fault of Hannah ”, he added.
In the last hours, some media have speculated that the team practiced shooting with real bullets in the breaks of filming , something for which Gutierrez Reed is not responsible .
“Hannah and the prop manager were in control of the guns and they never saw anyone shoot real bullets with those guns, they never did. would have allowed ”, justified the letter.
The pistol that fired Baldwin , a Colt revolver 24, was stored with two other weapons, one modified so that it could not fire live ammunition and another made of plastic.
The Sheriff of Santa Fe, Adan Mendoza , said at a news conference on Wednesday that he had found some 500 rounds of ammunition that he described as a mix of ” blank cartridges, fake bullets ”and what he“ suspects ”could be“ real bullets. ”
In response to questions from the press about the possible legal responsibility of Baldwin , who in addition to being the protagonist of the film is one of the producers, the sheriff stressed that “Nothing is ruled out.”