Full Rust police report paints picture of chaotic set ahead of fatal shooting

More than a year after the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the low-budget Western Rust, the Sante Fe Sherriff’s Department has publicly released its full report on the incident. Per Deadline, the massive 550-page report—covering timelines, interviews, and all the other details of the investigation—is available to read online, but there are a few threads we can already tease out from the data.

Among other things, we have further confirmation that multiple people on the film’s set put at least some of the blame for the incident on armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the crew member directly responsible for the guns on Rust’s set. For instance, Ross Addiego, a dolly grip who was present when the gun in star Alec Baldwin’s hand went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza, said that, the previous week, there had been at least one accidental discharge of a firearm that Gutierrez-Reed was handling. Addiego also asserted that, that same week, there had been at least one incident in which first assistant director Dave Halls hadn’t announced beforehand that a gun was going to be fired, standard procedure on any film set involving firearms. Addiego also says he heard Gutierrez-Reed declare that the gun that killed Hutchins was “clear.” (Halls has also admitted he didn’t check every round of the gun before declaring it “cold” during the day’s rehearsal.)

Another crew member, assistant chief lighting technician Matthew J. Hemmer, reportedly told police that Gutierrez-Reed wasn’t certified as an armorer, and claimed that on at least one instance she requested his help with the handling of one of the production’s Colt .45 revolvers, which he declared to be in poor condition. And props master Sarah Zachry told police that she was concerned that Gutierrez-Reed hadn’t known or used the proper procedure for distinguishing dummy rounds from live rounds.

Elsewhere, the report details efforts to figure out one of the central questions of this entire tragic incident: How and why a live bullet was on a movie set only using dummy rounds in the first place. Much of the focus there is on Seth Kenney, reportedly Gutierrez-Reed’s supplier for the film. Among other things, there are repeated references to live shooting or training sessions that were happening around the film’s production, which might have caused live ammo to be brought onto the set. Kenney also contacted police to suggest that some of the ammo on the Rust set may have been reloaded rounds, rather than factory-issue ammunition, and that it’s possible that a live round made its way into the mix through that angle.

All told, there’s an enormous amount of information to sift through here: Interviews, emails and texts between the participants, and forensic data all centered on trying to figure out what the hell happened that day. That’s going to become especially relevant soon, since we’re now two weeks past when this report was handed to the district attorney’s office overseeing the case. Although there’s no expectation of charges coming before Thanksgiving, some kind of criminal prosecution is likely to happen at some point, and it’s still not entirely clear who’s going to be named as possible defendants. Baldwin, meanwhile, is pursuing his own legal strategy: He’s suing Gutierrez-Reed, Halls, Zachry, and Kenney, alleging that they all contributed to the incident, which he said both traumatized him and damaged his career and reputation.