Accident on the set
It was only her second film: Weapons expert is the focus of the investigation
Police investigated the church at Bonanza Creek Ranch where Alec Baldwin’s fatal gunshot accident occurred
© Roberto E. Rosales / DPA
The investigation into the accidental death of the cameraman Halyna Hutchins continues. The police investigation is apparently focused on the gun expert on the film set.
Is the gun loaded or not? And if so: with what type of ammunition? When shooting on a film set, these questions can make the difference between life and death. No wonder that Hollywood productions try to protect themselves from accidents with gun experts who meticulously check the safety measures. Now the fatal accident happened while filming the western “Rust”. And the weapons expert is the focus of the investigation.
This emerges from the search report that the investigators had requested for the visit to the filming location. After a bullet from the main actor Alec Baldwin’s pistol, which was actually declared unloaded, had apparently come loose at Bonanza Creek Ranch and the camerawoman Halyna Hutchins was fatally wounded, the role of the 24-year-old gun expert Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is now being investigated.
Investigations into weapons expert
According to the documents, she was responsible for the safety of the pistol and two other firearms. As far as we know, she had loaded the gun and put it on a cart outside a building where filming was taking place, along with two others. Assistant director Dave Halls is said to have handed the weapon over to the leading actor Baldwin and declared it to be a “cold gun”, meaning unloaded. Then it appeared to be the fatal shot. The exact sequence of events is the subject of the investigation.
Meanwhile, the weapons expert’s qualifications are being questioned louder and louder. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is the daughter of the weapons expert Thell Reed, who is highly respected in the branch, who gave weapons training to Brad Pitt and who was in charge of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” as an expert. Gutierrez-Reed himself had only overseen one film before “Rust”: Nicholas Cage’s western “The Old Way” was shot in August.
After the accident, voices are now being raised that there were also safety concerns there. Gutierrez-Reed is said to have given eleven-year-old actress Ryan Kiera Armstrong a pistol that she had previously loaded on the ground. Crew members took them out of the girl’s hands again because they were convinced that the expert had not adequately examined them for possible sources of danger, it is said. “She was a little carefree with the guns and waved them around every now and then,” the Ney York Post quoted a person on the set as saying.
Doubts about security
There were also security concerns when filming “Rust” itself. On Saturday it became known that crew members had left the set because they found the working conditions problematic. At least one of the employees also mentioned handling weapons as a reason. A week ago, there had been at least two accidental shots on set from a pistol at Baldwin’s stunt double.
Statements by the expert herself also cast doubts that she took the dangers of firearms seriously enough. “The best part of my job is that I can show people who are normally afraid of firearms how safe they are,” she said on a podcast after filming “The Old Way”. “And that they are really unproblematic if they don’t fall into the wrong hands. “
Sources: New York Post, Los Angeles Times