The armor of the movie “Rust”, on whose film set a filmmaker was killed by an accidental shot by actor Alec Baldwin, sued Wednesday the western’s ammunition supplier, whom he accuses of having left real bullets in the middle of fictitious cartridges.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was the gunsmith for the film shot in New Mexico, when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot on October 21.
The shot came from a pistol given to Baldwin, presented as harmless, and used during a replay of a scene.
According to movie safety rules, live bullets are totally prohibited on set.
In his civil complaint filed in court, Reed blames the provider, Seth Kenney, having delivered “ammunition that was erroneously presented as dummy ammunition”, inert and without gunpowder, “when they contained both dummy and real ammunition”.
According to the complaint, police discovered after the incident “seven bullets” that appeared to be real scattered around a cartridge case, a carriage, and cartridge belts that served as props for the actors.
For the young gunsmith, the supplier’s negligence “led to the introduction of live bullets on the recording set, which resulted in a foreseeable catastrophe.” The compensation demanded in the lawsuit is not known.
Kenney told the authorities that he could potentially sell hand-assembled ammunition to the film production – perhaps from recycled elements – whose logo corresponds to the one on the deadly cartridge. But then he excluded the eventuality on the ABC channel.
So far no one has been arrested, but justice does not exclude criminal prosecution.