When taking the stand Monday in the involuntary manslaughter trial of armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, Rust ammunition supplier Seth Kenney stated that he did not provide the production crew with live rounds for their 2021 shoot.
The owner of PDQ Arm and Prop said that nine days before fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, he had supplied Gutierrez and prop master Sarah Zachry with a single box of dummy rounds for a Colt .45 revolver on Oct. 12, 2021. Kenney testified that he rattled each of the dummies he provided on set to ensure they contained BBs and were not blanks or live ammunition.
“I have never sent out any dummy round that doesn’t rattle,” said Kenney. “Unless it rattles, it’s not to be trusted.”
According to Variety, Gutierrez-Reed’s defense team has argued Kenny was at fault. Her defense attorney Jason Bowles questioned Kenny regarding live ammunition given to the actors of Yellowstone spinoff 1883 for a weapons training camp using live ammunition. The ammunition supplier said that he brought back the live ammo for the 1883 crew, which was labeled in a bin at the PDQ offices, but that he did not remember the exact date. Kenny also stated that he did not have an official inventory spreadsheet.
“It was casual,” he said. “You had to know what your inventory was by memory.”
Rebecca Smith, the key craft services person on the Rust set, also testified Monday. Smith said that on the night of the shooting, Gutierrez-Reed asked her to hold onto a clear baggie with a white substance in it.
Smith, a recovering addict, believed it to be cocaine, and threw it in the trash. “I was really offended,” Smith said. “I didn’t want anything to do with the situation anymore.” She said that she did not know for certain what the contents of the bag were, and that Gutierrez-Reed texted her after asking for her “stuff” back.
Prosecutors have previously alleged that Gutierrez-Reed was indulging in drugs and alcohol before inadvertently placing a live bullet in the prop gun that actor Alec Baldwin fired on set, killing Halyna Hutchins. They claim text messages extracted from her phone show that when someone asked if she needed any cocaine one week prior to arriving on set, Gutierrez-Reed replied, “Already got some.” They claim a hotel employee who befriended Gutierrez-Reed reported that the armorer was in possession of ammunition for the movie while also smoking weed, off hours, in her hotel room. In a Jan. 31 filing, prosecutors included excerpts from several of the allegedly damaging text exchanges.
Gutierrez-Reed has pleaded not guilty to negligently loading the live bullet into Baldwin’s revolver that fired and killed Hutchins on Oct. 21, 2021.