He gave actor Alec Baldwin (63) the fateful weapon with the words “Cold Gun” on the set for the filming of the western “Rust”. A fatal mistake!
The fact that assistant director Dave Halls was wrong, that the pistol was not “cold”, but loaded with live ammunition, led only a short time later to the fatal shots at cameraman Halyna Hutchins (42).
As can now be seen from new documents, Halls told the police that he could not remember whether Hannah Gutierrez (24), weapons specialist in production, had complied with an important security protocol,
Accordingly, Gutierrez showed him the weapon before Halls handed it over to Baldwin, according to a statement on the search warrant published on Wednesday in the Santa Fe County Magistrate Court.
The assistant director also stated that when Hannah showed him the gun, he saw only three cartridges. He stated that he should have checked all of the cartridges, but he did not, and he could not remember whether she was turning the drum, investigators wrote in the affidavit.
When asked about the on-set security protocols related to firearms, Hall told police that the armorer “turns the drum” and checks that there are no live cartridges before handing them over.
“I check the barrel for obstacles, most of the time there is no sharp shot, Hannah opens the hatch and turns the drum, and I say cold gun,” Halls told the authorities.
Gunsmith Gutierrez was also questioned by the police, but how exactly she checked the gun before handing it over to Halls is not clear from the affidavit. She said that on the day of the incident she checked the props and made sure that they were not “hot” cartridges, the document says.
When a police officer asked about live ammunition on set, the gun master replied that she never kept live ammunition on set.
A lie? During a press conference on Wednesday, Sheriff Adan Mendoza stated that “around 500 rounds of ammunition were seized on set, including a mixture of blanks, sham ammunition and what we suspect is live ammunition”.
Now it is being investigated how it got there and why it was there at all, because it should not have been there.