Search Warrant Reveals Interesting Info About "Rust" Shooting

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The shooting on the set of the film Rust has definitely raised more than a few eyebrows. After all, a big-name star shot and killed an up-and-coming cinematographer in what looks like a horrific act of someone’s negligence and the whole world is wondering just what happened.

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Since right after the shooting, authorities began an investigation to determine just where the failures were and to ultimately find out who, if anyone, was responsible.

A recent search warrant seems to have come with some important information, but few answers.

A new search warrant filed Tuesday reveals who supplied the guns and ammo for the movie, including the gun Alec Baldwin fired during rehearsal, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. The supplier was a film prop business called PDQ Arm & Prop, LLC.

The search warrant indicates the live ammunition of the set of “Rust” might have originated with Thell Reed, father of “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

The filing indicates Thell Reed, who is also an armorer, did not intentionally provide the live rounds, but ammunition he brought to an earlier, separate production might have made its way to the set, by way of Seth Kenney, owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, LLC.

Thell Reed told investigators a few months ago, he and Kenney were working together and were part of firearms training with the actors.

Kenney asked Reed to bring “live ammunition.”

When production ended, Thell said Kenney took the ammo and after several attempts to get it back, he told Thell to quote “write it off.”

So they’ve traced the ammunition to the father of the armorer on the set.

Thell Reed is a well-respected armorer in the film community with almost 50 film credits to his name. Kenney, however, has only one credit according to IMDB.

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Honestly, this doesn’t actually clear anything up. The live rounds were brought in months ago to teach the actors how to shoot, but Kenney didn’t bother to get all the ammunition back?

And how did Hannah Gutierrez-Reed not know there were live rounds on the set still? Was she unaware that there had been live rounds in the first place? If so, how could she not know?

Honestly, I don’t see how Gutierrez-Reed has a career as an armorer after this one, but she shouldn’t take the fall for this all on her lonesome, either. Seth Kenney apparently brought the live rounds onto the set and then failed to retrieve them. There’s no excuse for that and he’s at least as culpable as Gutierrez-Reed, if not more so.

After all, while he lacks IMDB credits, he’s been around the industry long enough to know better whereas she’s a new armorer just getting started.

Obviously, the investigation is ongoing and more information may surface to completely change our understanding of what happened that awful day. As it stands now, though, it looks like there was plenty of screwing up to go around and we may not find out exactly how things shook out for quite some time.

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