Claims of "sabotage" on Rust set are a "conspiracy theory," says Santa Fe DA
Additionally, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's lawyers now say she had a mentor on set
The Santa Fe County District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies has shut down claims made last week by the lawyers of Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed that the live round placed in the prop gun used by Alec Baldwin could be an act of “sabotage.”
In an interview with ABC News, DA Carmack-Altwies goes so far as to call the cries of sabotage a “conspiracy theory.”
Carmack-Altwies moves on to confirm Baldwin’s original testimony, saying he had “no idea” the gun was loaded when he shot it. As a result, the investigation is now focusing on the Rust set before the shooting took place.
The DA also reports more live rounds of ammunition have been found on the set over the course of the investigation.
“I think the most concerning thing is that there were so many levels of failures on that set,” Carmack-Altwies says. “We still don’t know how [the live rounds] got there, I think will be one of the most important factors going into a charging decision.”
Meanwhile, Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers have now come forward with reports that she was overseen by a “mentor” by the name of Seth Kenney. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Rust producers did hire Kenney as an “armorer mentor” for Gutierrez-Reed and he appears on an internal Rust crew list.
According to Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer, Kenney, who owns a licensed weapon and prop rental company in Arizona, supplied the firearms and “most of the ammunition” for the set, including the Colt revolver fired by Baldwin the day of the shooting. Per The Times report, the investigation has not confirmed how much, if any, ammunition Kenney supplied for the set.
Furthermore, several Rust crew members say they “didn’t recall seeing Kenney on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set.” To make things sound a lot worse, longtime prop masters and armorers tell The Times that they’ve never heard of such a position as “armorer mentor.”
Carmack-Altwies says authorities are looking into how much experience Gutierrez-Reed had as an armor and whether or not she was qualified to hold that job. Gutierrez-Reed is set to undergo second interview with detectives.