- A former "Rust" crew member called the "sabotage" allegations by attorneys for the film's armorer "irresponsible."
- "I find them to be incredibly irresponsible allegations and slanderous," Lane Luper told "Today."
A former "Rust" crew member who resigned from the movie production a day before actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on set with a prop gun has slammed the "sabotage" allegations by attorneys for the film's armorer as "irresponsible" and "dangerous."
"I find them to be incredibly irresponsible allegations and slanderous," Lane Luper, the first camera assistant on the indie Western film, told the "Today" show in a segment that aired Thursday.
During an interview Wednesday night with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Luper called the "sabotage" accusations "dangerous."
"It's an irresponsible theory to put out on TV," Luper said, explaining, "If they have any evidence of that, they should be talking to the sheriff and not morning television shows."
Without providing any evidence, lawyers for the movie's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had claimed on Wednesday that someone may have put a live bullet into a box of "dummy" rounds on the
"We're assuming somebody put the live round in that box, which if you think about that, the person who put the live round in that box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging this set," Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer Jason Bowles said on the "Today" show Wednesday.
Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set while rehearsing a scene for the film on October 21.
The Colt .45 revolver that Baldwin fired was supposed to be loaded with dummy rounds, but somehow live ammunition had been loaded into the weapon, authorities have said.
Bowles said that Gutierrez-Reed - who was in charge of weapons on the set - loaded the revolver with rounds "from that box" and later found out that there was at least one live round in the gun, adding that "she had no idea" and had "inspected the rounds."
"I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, would want to prove a point, would want to say they're disgruntled, they're unhappy," Bowles said as he pointed to reports that camera-crew members had walked off the movie set in protest of working conditions.
Luper had resigned from the production a day before the fatal incident over safety concerns on the set.
Luper told CNN, "It's absolutely the responsibility of the armorer to make sure that you're properly loading the firearm and inspecting it before and after and also not loading the firearm until right before you're going to shoot."
In his resignation letter to production, Luper cited safety issues on set.
"Safety concerns were overlooked consistently and it led to somebody dying on a movie set," Luper told CNN.
He continued, "It started out with all these red flags throughout the entire course of the production. It started out with a lack of safety meetings. It started with inexperienced key personnel."
"It was one red flag after another red flag until finally there was the negligent [firearm] discharges that happened on October 16," said Luper, explaining that on that day there were two accidental firearm discharges "that were not under anybody's control."
"At that point, they should have stopped filming, pulled the firearm out of circulation per the industry-wide safety rules, but we kept filming anyway," Luper claimed.
In a statement to Insider on Thursday, the producers of "Rust" said Luper's "allegations around budget and safety are patently false."
"He had absolutely nothing to do with it or knowledge of safety protocols or budgets," the statement read. "As we continue to cooperate with all investigations, we are limited in what we can say. However, safety is always the number one priority in our films, and it is truly awful to see someone using this tragedy for personal gain."