The attorney for the armorer on the movie starring Alec Baldwin offered a new theory as to how the fatal shooting could have happened.
Co-host of “Good Morning America” Michael Strahan noted Wednesday officials say they found 500 rounds of ammunition, including “dummy rounds” and live rounds.
He asked attorney for Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Jason Bowles, “Why were there live rounds on the set in the first place?”
Bowles replied, “That’s the biggest question in the whole case.”
He explained, “There’s no purpose for a live round on this set, zero…There was no reason for there to be live rounds. She didn’t have live rounds. She didn’t purchase any of this ammunition. This ammunition was purchased by other people, production.”
Bowles added, “So whoever brought these live rounds on set was wrong and I think they had a bad intention. That’s what we believe.”
The attorney claimed Gutierrez-Reed was “extremely safety conscious” on set, adding, “She did her best to ensure nobody ever pointed a firearm at anybody on set.”
Watch his comments below:
Jason Bowles, attorney for “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, says Hannah had been pulling rounds from a box labeled dummy rounds and "somebody put that live round or live rounds in that box. When you do that you can only have bad intentions." https://t.co/ojv26xKCNr pic.twitter.com/h0xymPvQuU
— Good Morning America (@GMA) November 3, 2021
According to Bowles, “There was a box labeled ‘dummy rounds’ that Hannah had been pulling from, she knew were dummy rounds.”
He continued, “Somebody put that live round or live rounds in that box. When you do that, you can only have bad intentions because you’re going to confuse the rounds if you’re the armorer and they appear very similarly. The dummy rounds look like a regular live round…We’re afraid that could have been what happened here, that somebody intended to sabotage this set with a live round intentionally placed in a box of dummies.”
When asked if he had evidence to support the argument, Bowles replied, “There can be very few explanations for why live rounds end up in a box of dummy prop ammunition on a movie set, and one of them is that somebody wants to go into a firearm and wants there to be an incident on the set. There is no other reason to mix a live round with the dummies. There’s just none.”
Last month, the actor fired a prop gun on the set of the movie, killing one film crew member and injuring another, as IJR reported.
Los Angeles Times reported Sunday there were three accidental discharges of weapons on set prior to the shooting.
