Rust Armorer Sues Ammunition Supplier for Allegedly Providing 'Both Dummy and Live' Rounds on Set
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Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer at the center of the Rust shooting investigation, is suing the ammunition supplier for the film.
Gutierrez-Reed, 24, claims Seth Kenney's company PDQ Arm and Prop, LLC supplied a mix of live and dummy ammunition prior to the fatal shooting that took the life of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.
In the complaint filed on Wednesday in New Mexico, Gutierrez-Reed said Kenney's company "distributed and sold prop ammunition which presented an unreasonable risk of injury, without warning of the risks that could have been avoided."
Furthermore, the armorer said in the documents that the ammunition supplier "prepared dummy ammunition cartridge boxes from surplus ammunition stockpiles that comprised of both dummy and live ammunition."
PEOPLE has reached out to Kenney and the Sante Fe District Attorney's Office for comment.
"These false representations caused live rounds to be introduced on set, resulting in a foreseeably catastrophic outcome, and causing damages to persons on the Rust set," the complaint continued. "The introduction of live rounds onto the set, which no one anticipated, combined with the rushed and chaotic atmosphere, created a perfect storm for a safety incident."
Gutierrez-Reed is asking for a jury trial, as well as damages and attorneys' fees.
James Gourley/Shutterstock Halyna Hutchins
On Dec. 2, Kenney told Good Morning America that the live rounds found by investigators on the set of the film were not supplied by him or his company.
"It's not a possibility that they came from PDQ or from myself personally," Kenney said at the time.
In early November, Gutierrez-Reed's attorneys, Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence told Today they were looking into the possibility that someone intentionally "sabotaged" the set before Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed Hutchins with a prop gun.
Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed loaded a bullet into the prop gun that killed Hutchins from a box of dummy rounds and only found the live round later.
RELATED: Rust Armorer's Statement That There Were No Real Lead Bullets on Set Is 'Not Accurate,' Says Sheriff
He explained, "We don't know whether that live round came from that box. We're assuming it did. We're assuming someone put the live round in that box."
Bowles told Today anchor Savannah Guthrie that someone placing a live round in the dummy box would "have to have the purpose of sabotaging the set," adding, "There's no other reason you would do that." The lawyer did not address the possibility that the live round could have been placed in the dummy box unintentionally.
When Guthrie asked if his theory was that "somebody intentionally placed a live round into a box of dummies for the purpose of it ending up in a weapon that would be used on set," Bowles said he and Gorence did not have a theory yet, but were considering sabotage as "one of the possibilities."
Jae C Hong/AP/Shutterstock Set of 'Rust'
"I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove point, want to say that they're disgruntled, they're unhappy," Bowles said. "And we know that people had already walked off the set the day before."
Gutierrez-Reed previously said "no live ammo is ever kept on set," a statement later rebutted by Sante Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who told Today that was incorrect.
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"That was a live round that struck and killed Ms. Hutchins, so that's not an accurate statement as far as I'm concerned," he said.
At a press conference, Mendoza said investigators discovered "500 rounds of ammunition" on the set, including, "a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and what we are suspecting are live rounds."
