'Rust' Armorer Breaks Silence Following Media's Untruths: Who Should Face Legal Liability?
"Rust" armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, broke her silence after the authorities seemingly pressed her on the shooting incident.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza dropped a shocking update during his appearance on the "Today" show (via Deadline), saying that Gutierrez Reed lied in her statement. The team reportedly found evidence that contradicted what the armorer claimed.
However, the gun supervisor recently hit back and said the media uttered "untruths" about her.
Through his attorney, she released a statement on Thursday through NBC News saying that she had no idea where the ammo came from.
"Safety is Hannah's number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from," attorneys Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence said, as quoted by CNN.
However, her new statement has been dismissed by two crew members of Nicolas Cage's film, "The Old way." According to the members, Gutierrez Reed became a head armorer for the first time in the movie, and they claimed she was reckless when she did her job.
What The Investigators Found Out
During Wednesday's conference, Sheriff Mendoza revealed that they found 500 rounds of ammunition on the set, including a mix of blanks, dummy, and live rounds.
He also confirmed that the projectile that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was a live round, dismissing Gutierrez Reed's claims about the gun not having live ammunition.
In the search warrant, she narrated how she checked the gun Baldwin used before having a lunch break. She also secured dummy rounds on the firearm.
Gutierrez Reed, once again, offered a cryptic statement by saying she found ammunition on a cart and inside the prop truck. After their lunch break, crew member Sarah Zachary got the firearms out of the safe and handed them to her before the armorer passed them to Baldwin and Halls.
As the New Mexico authorities have not ruled out criminal charges yet, questions on who should be liable emerged. The future lawsuit seeking civil liability would probably make the armorer and the assistant director who handed the gun to Baldwin the people responsible for the incident.
"For a criminal case, you're going to need some sort of actual intent, or criminal negligence, gross negligence. That's... something more than pointing the gun," former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani in Los Angeles said.
As of the writing, investigators still work on the investigation until they find whether civil lawsuits could be filed.
