The armorer for Alec Baldwin’s “Rust” movie has claimed that the embattled Hollywood star is to blame for the fatal on-set shooting because he allegedly skipped a vital training session shortly before the tragedy.
The shooting killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.
On Wednesday, the movie’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, filed a lawsuit in a Bernalillo County, New Mexico court.
In the suit, she claims that Alec Baldwin blew off a “cross draw” training session a week before the tragic death.
She also blamed assistant director David Halls for not following proper set protocol when he handed Baldwin the weapon without first calling her to inspect it.
She is suing Seth Kenney, the owner of PDQ Media Arm & Prop, because he supplied ammunition to the production and she claims he made “false representations” that caused “live rounds to be introduced on the New Mexico movie set.”
“Defendants distributed boxes of ammunition purporting to contain dummy rounds, but which contained a mix of dummy and live ammunition to the Rust production,” the suit states.
“Hannah and the entire Rust movie crew relied on the Defendants’ misrepresentation that they provided only dummy ammunition.
“In so doing, Defendants created a dangerous condition on the movie set, unbeknownst to Hannah Gutierrez Reed, which caused a foreseeable risk of injury to numerous people.”
“To the best of Hannah’s knowledge, the gun was now loaded with 6 dummy rounds,” the suit says.
“Indeed, Defendants as suppliers of prop ammunition to the Rust set, sold, distributed, and advertised its props as dummy ammunition and not live rounds.
“Hannah relied upon and trusted that Defendants would only supply dummy prop ammunition, or blanks, and no live rounds were ever to be on set.”
“Had Hannah been called back in, she would have re-inspected the weapon, and every round again, and instructed Baldwin on safe gun practice with the cross draw, as was her standard practice on set and under circumstances where (1) Baldwin did not respond to Hannah’s request on October 15 to schedule cross draw training and (2) the gun had been out of her possession for 15 minutes,” the suit says.
From Variety:
Kenney, who owns PDQ Arm & Prop in Albuquerque, has previously described to investigators how dummy rounds may have become mixed with “reloaded” rounds that contained live bullets. The live rounds would have had the Starline Brass logo, making them appear similar to dummy rounds.
However, in a subsequent interview with ABC News, Kenney contradicted that statement, flatly denying that the live rounds came from him.
“It’s not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally,” he said, saying that rounds are individually rattle-tested before they are sent out to film sets.
The suit accuses Kenney of trying to shift blame for the live rounds to Gutierrez Reed.
“Seth took it upon himself to essentially investigate this matter for the Sheriff’s Office and insert himself into this matter and attempt to implicate Hannah,” the suit alleges.
