MOVIE NEWS – The weapons supervisor on the film “Rust”, on which a crew member died after a gun held by actor Alec Baldwin went off during rehearsal, has no idea where the real bullet came from, she claims.

A tragedy recently struck the set of the western film Rust, where director Joel Souza was injured, and cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died from her injuries, caused by a prop gun fired by lead actor and producer Alec Baldwin. Although he fired the gun, he did not cause the cameraman’s death, and an investigation is ongoing into who is responsible. It has recently looked increasingly likely that the gun supervisor and gun maker, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, could be the prime suspect, especially as there have been complaints about her behaviour on a film set. Gutierrez-Reed hired a lawyer (Jason Bowles) who conveyed the professional’s point of view in a statement sent to Variety. It is quoted below.

“First, Hannah would like to express her deepest and most sincere condolences to Halyna’s family and friends. She [the cinematographer] was an inspiring professional woman for [Gutierrez-Reed] to look up to. His thoughts are also with Joel [the director] and prayers for his speedy recovery. Hannah was shaken and devastated by what happened.”

“However, she would like to address some of the untrue allegations that have been reported in the media, which have portrayed her in a bad light or constitute defamation. For Hannah, safety on the set comes first. After all, there would not have been any danger on this shoot if there had not been live ammunition on the scene. Hannah has no idea where the live ammunition came from. She and the prop man checked the guns, and Hannah never saw anyone using them with live ammunition, nor would she have allowed it to happen. They were locked up every night, and at lunchtime, there was simply no possibility of any of these being out of sight or fired by any of the crew. To date, Hannah has never had an accident in which any of her guns were accidentally discharged. […]”

“Hannah was working in two capacities on the film, which made it very difficult for her to concentrate [fully] on her gunsmithing. She struggled to have the training, an adequate amount of days to maintain the guns and enough preparation time to fire them. Still, the production managers and supervisors had other ideas. The whole shooting location was unsafe for several reasons, one of which [was] the lack of safety meetings. This was not Hannah’s fault. Hannah and her legal representatives will respond to further rumours and the accident as a whole in a more extensive statement [like this] next week.”

As mentioned in the introduction, this wouldn’t be the first complaint about Hannah Gutierez-Reed. Nicolas Cage, for example, recently came out about her firing his weapon twice without warning on the set of his film The Old Way, and then being removed shortly afterwards. Gutierez-Reed has not been in the business long, but his father, Thell Reed, is a seasoned veteran who has worked on Brad Pitt films. In addition to Hannah Gutierez-Reed, assistant director Dave Halls has had similar incidents, having been fired by the producers of Freedom’s Path for not following safety regulations regarding weapons. Add to this the fact that other reports have also suggested that working conditions at Rust were unsafe in several ways.

Below are pictures of the weapons officer, Hannah Gutierez-Reed, who recently deleted herself from major social media sites.

24 year old Hannah Gutierrez-Reed the set armorer that was hired by Rust Movie Productions and is responsible for all guns on the Alec Baldwin Western Film ‘Rust’ in New Mexico has deleted her TikTok and Twitter and also her Facebook and Instagram accounts. pic.twitter.com/NvCJiTUCMu

— 🌈 (@MagicZoetrope) October 24, 2021

Source: CNN