Alec Baldwin & 'Rust' Team Were Told Never To Point Gun – Loaded Or Unloaded – At Anyone, Claims Armorer's Attorney
Alec Baldwin and the entire Rust team were told explicitly never to point a gun at anyone at any time for any reason, claim the attorneys for the western film's head armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
"Hannah was incredibly safety conscious and took her job very seriously from the moment she started on Oct. 4," one of the 24-year-old's lawyers, Jason Bowles, told Fox News on Thursday.
"She did firearms training for the actors as well as Mr. Baldwin, she fought for more training days and she regularly emphasized to never point a firearm at a person," he went on, adding that "Hannah did everything in her power to ensure a safe set."
According to safety recommendations from the Contract Services Administration Trust Fund and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), all firearms on set – whether real, replicas, loaded or empty – are to be treated as though they are loaded with live ammunition.
Additionally, the union notes "blanks can kill" and that weapons should never be pointed at another person.
Baldwin, Gutierrez-Reed and assistant director Dave Halls have all been identified by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office as the people they believe had contact with the firearm that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on Oct. 21.
Bowles said his client "inspected the rounds that she loaded into the firearms that day" because she "always inspected the rounds."
"She did again right before handing the firearm to Mr. Halls, by spinning the cylinder and showing him all of the rounds and then handing him the firearm," he claimed.
Halls has been accused of handing the gun directly to Baldwin and declaring it a "cold" gun before the actor fired off what ended up being a live round.
"Never in a million years did Hannah think that live rounds could have been in the 'dummy' round box," Bowles said, reiterating a shocking claim he made earlier this week. "Who put those in there and why is the central question."
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When Bowles and his partner, Robert Gorence, appeared on the Today show Wednesday morning, they alleged that the live round that killed Hutchins was obtained from a box that was supposed to contain only dummy rounds.
They pointed to the walkout from earlier in the day, suggesting that a "disgruntled" camera crew member could have intentionally "tampered with" Baldwin's firearm by planting a live round or several amid the dummy rounds in order to "sabotage the set."
Oddly enough, given their seemingly contradictory statements the following day, Gutierrez-Reed's legal team claimed that she did not inspect the cartridge before the gun was handed to Baldwin, nor was she even present for the shooting, because what was going on inside the makeshift church on Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was allegedly a "tech prep" and not a rehearsal.
According to Gorence, a tech prep does not call for the use of weapons. Had the cast and crew's gathering in the church been considered a rehearsal, he argued, his client would have been present and would have inspected the gun.
In her affidavit, Gutierrez-Reed – who'd held the position of head armorer for the first time only months prior – told investigators that the gun in question had been locked in a safe during a lunch break prior to the fatal shooting.
Yet Gorence told The New York Times something different. He claimed that she loaded the firearm with dummy rounds for later that afternoon, placed a sock over it to prevent anyone from picking it up and went to lunch.
"Was there a duty to safeguard them 24/7?" asked Gorence. "The answer is no, because there were no live rounds."
The investigation is ongoing. Nothing and no one have been ruled out in terms of criminal charges.
