Attorneys for “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed have suggested that someone intentionally smuggled live rounds of ammunition into a box of dummy rounds before cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the film set in New Mexico.
While appearing Wednesday on multiple morning news programs, lawyer Jason Bowles floated the possibility that someone “intended to sabotage” the production by sneaking live rounds into the package of ammo Gutierrez Reed used to load the prop gun fired by star Alec Baldwin.
“Why do you place that in the box labeled ‘dummies’ that the armorer is going to be pulling from?” Bowles said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“Why would you do that other than to try to cause some incident on the set? Now, we’re not saying anybody had any intent there was going to be a tragedy — a homicide — but they wanted to do something to cause a safety incident on set. That’s what we believe happened.”
When “Good Morning America” anchor Michael Strahan pressed Bowles for evidence to support his “very, very serious allegation,” Gutierrez Reed’s rep asserted that his client did not place into the ammunition box the live round that ultimately struck Hutchins in the chest on New Mexico’s Bonanza Creek Ranch.
“We know the live rounds shouldn’t have been in that box, but they were,” Bowles continued.
“So there can be very, very few explanations for why live rounds end up in a box of dummy prop ammunition on a movie set. And one of them is that somebody wants that to go into a firearm and then wants there to be an incident on the set. There’s no other reason to mix a live round with the dummies. There’s just none.”
After Bowles and his co-attorney Robert Gorence presented the same argument on Wednesday’s episode of NBC’s “Today” show, host Savannah Guthrie questioned why anyone would “have the motive and opportunity” to plant such a safety hazard behind the scenes of the Baldwin western.
“I believe that somebody who would do that would want to … prove a point, want to say that they’re disgruntled,” Bowles told Guthrie.
“And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before. … And the reason they were unhappy is they’re working 12- to 14-hour days. They were not given hotel rooms in and around the area. So they had to drive back and forth an hour to Albuquerque, and they’re unhappy.”
According to the Los Angeles Times’ timeline of events leading to the shooting, the “Rust” camera crew had indeed staged a walkout ahead of the incident after expressing concerns about unreasonable working conditions.
At the mention of the walkout, Guthrie interrupted Bowles again to confirm whether or not he was accusing the disgruntled crew members of planting the live ammunition.
“You can’t rule anybody out at this point,” Bowles said. “We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn’t have been there. …
“We have people who had left the set who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a time frame between 11 and 1 (p.m.), approximately, that day in which the firearms, at times, were unattended. So there was opportunity to tamper with the scene. And yes, we’re looking at that possibility.”
A representative for the crew members who walked off the “Rust” set declined to comment when reached Wednesday by the Los Angeles Times.
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