Posted on 10/29/2021 7:40:57 AM PDT by conservative98
The rookie armorer in charge of weapons when Alec Baldwin accidentally shot dead his cinematographer has insisted she has “no idea” where the live ammunition came from — and is blaming the tragedy on her cost-cutting bosses.
Lawyers for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed told NBC late Thursday that the 24-year-old former model “is devastated and completely beside herself over the events that have transpired” on the set of Baldwin’s “Rust.”
“Safety is Hannah’s number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced,” her attorneys, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, said in a statement.
“Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from,” the attorneys insisted, saying all the guns had been locked up each night.
Gutierrez-Reed — who was working only her second job as armorer — also insisted she was understaffed, undertrained and overruled when she tried to improve safety on the New Mexico set before Baldwin accidentally shot dead Halyna Hutchins, 42, last Thursday.
“Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer,” the statement said.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Gutierrez-Reed has complained of being undertrained and overworked before the accident. “She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department.
“The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings,” it said of the movie that days earlier avoided a strike by the crew.
Gutierrez-Reed appeared to confirm earlier reports that there had already been an “accidental discharge” of a weapon at least twice during filming, insisting she was not responsible for either.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Producers for the film and Rust Movies Productions LLC did not immediately return requests for comment, NBC said.
She has a point.
Put them all in jail
Unless it was a mechanical defect, it is a negligent discharge.
Any mechanical defect should have resulted in the gun removed from service and immediately dissembled.
The battle of the lawyers has begun.
the 24-year-old former model
Why do they feel the need to always add this? She took some selfies.
The fault falls on the trigger puller.
Gutierrez-Reed’s complaints about staffing appear to echo the reasons why experienced prop master Neal Zoromski said he turned down a job on the movie, fearing it was “an accident waiting to happen” as producers were only willing to hire one person to do “two really big jobs.”
“Rust” gaffer Serge Svetnoy — who said his friend Hutchins died in his arms — also called out the producers, who include Baldwin, for risking safety to save money by hiring inexperienced crew in key jobs.
“No saved penny is worth the LIFE of the person!” he wrote on Facebook.
Nothing about this was an accident. This was intentional,
I believe the prop master is over Hannah. And the prop master has been very quiet.
There is no logical nor reasonable explanation for live rounds to be on a movie set ...None whatsoever
well duh
when I'm cleaning guns no, no live ammo in the room.
If she identified the guns in the first two cases as loaded with blanks, then those would have been the responsibility of the subsequent handlers.
However, the gun in question she was supposed to load with dummy rounds.
This does doesn’t much to solve the case at hand, other then to point to sloppy general management. She is still responsible for her own actions. Nothing here absolves her of those actions.
It is the responsibility of the Armorer to be on set babysitting the guns whenever they are removed from the locked storage.
It is her responsibility to be confirming the state of the firearm then hand it to the Assistant Director for him to give to the actor, not just prepare three guns, place them on a cart like so many muffins, and walk away.
If she couldn't handle the job(s) assigned to her, and if she felt she couldn't give the necessary safety briefings, then she should have joined the first camera crew a week earlier and walked off the set.
“She has a point.”
Only insofar as she admits being absolutely incompetent at her job.
Set armorer’s #1 purpose is to ensure all weapons on set are functional and safe. Every round must be accounted for, every gun verified safe for the context of its use, every precaution taken to ensure accidents don’t harm anyone, and - undiscussed - everyone touching a weapon vetted on weapon handling safety. Her job included ensuring Baldwin himself would personally, automatically, check the safety condition of any weapon handed him - and stop him if he doesn’t.
True enough. Other news reports say that there were “misfires” of “prop guns”. They are actually real guns, and “misfires” are not what happened. Someone had to pull the trigger to cause the gun to fire.
I’m sure more facts will come out. I get the impression they want to blame everything on this “armorer” gal, due to her young age and alleged inexperience. I had heard her dad does this armorer work too, and she’s been around guns all her life, so she’s not exactly inexperienced in handling weapons.
Not if producers are overruling her and have her off doing another job.
I guess, I do not understand the use of a movie prop for cast & crew’s target practice.
Nothing wrong with target practice, but with a prop? That somehow sounds like an invite to an “accident”
You beat me to it. As a former Producer, I’ve only had two projects with live weapons (not “props”). It might be age-ist and/or sexist of me, but there’s no way I would hire a young 20-something mirror selfie taking emo girl to be in charge of set armor unless she had a mile long credit sheet with key references. As an aside, I once played a fugitive escapee tracked and caught by a real SWAT team. I know those semis and pistols were not cleared or checked, but at least they were held and pointed at me by straight fingered professionals.
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