International- The "Rust" armorer's lawyers say someone may have put live ammunition into a box of dummy rounds.
- The lawyers for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed made the comments on the "Today" show.
Attorneys for the armorer in charge of weapons on the movie set of "Rust" - where the actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer - suggested Wednesday that someone may have swapped out a dummy round with a live bullet to "sabotage" the production.
Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, the lawyers for the 24-year-old armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, made the speculation during an interview on NBC's "Today" without providing any evidence.
When he was asked by the host Savannah Guthrie whether Gutierrez-Reed had loaded a live round into the FD Pietta long Colt .45 revolver that Baldwin fired on the
"There was a box of dummy rounds, and the box is labeled dummy. Hannah did take from that box, which she, by all accounts, should have been able to rely on," Bowles said, adding: "That contains only dummy rounds."
Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed loaded the revolver with rounds "from that box" and later found out that live ammunition had been loaded into the weapon, he said, adding that "she had no idea" and had "inspected the rounds."
"Now we don't know, however, whether that live round came from that box," Bowles said. "We're assuming it did. 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."
Bowles added: "There's no other reason you would do that - that you would mix that live round in with the dummy rounds."
Asked by Guthrie whether that was their theory, Bowles said, "We don't have a theory yet. We are investigating."
"That's one of the possibilities," he added.
"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 hours before the fatal October 21 shooting.
"We know that people already walked off the set the day before," Bowles said. "And they're unhappy."
The attorney added: "We know a couple of facts. We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn't have been there - at least one live round."
Bowles said: "We have a time frame between 11 and 1, approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene, and, yes, we're looking at that possibility."
He added: "I think you can't rule anybody out at this point."
The shooting remains under
Meanwhile, a previously released affidavit from the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office said the gun that Baldwin used was "set up" by Gutierrez-Reed and then given to the assistant director Dave Halls.
Halls had handed Baldwin the gun while inside a church-building setting on the Bonanza Creek Ranch and yelled "cold gun," which indicated that it did not contain any live rounds before the shooting, the documents said.
According to another affidavit, Halls told investigators that he did not check all the rounds in the barrel of the revolver before giving it to Baldwin and that he should have.
"He advised he should have checked all of them but didn't and couldn't recall if" Gutierrez-Reed "spun the drum" of the gun, the documents said.
Bowles said during the Wednesday interview that Gutierrez-Reed "did spin the cylinder" of the gun for Halls.
"She did show him each and every round in that chamber, which there were six," Bowles said. "There were six dummy rounds she believed to be in that handgun. She spun it and showed it all to Mr. Hall."
When questioned by Guthrie on whether Gutierrez-Reed should have known there was a live round in the barrel of the gun as she spun the drum, Bowles said that dummy rounds "mimic and look like a real round."
"On that scene, on that set, at that time Hannah spun it for Mr. Halls, he took the weapon and then he went into the church and thereafter provided it apparently to Mr. Baldwin," Bowles said.