A new search warrant from the Santa Fe sheriff’s department focuses on the owner of a prop-supply company as the possible source of the real bullet that led to the fatal shooting on the set of the Western film Rust.
Alec Baldwin, the star and producer of the film, was holding the prop gun when it went off on October 21, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding writer-director Joel Souza. But investigation documents suggest Baldwin was told it was an unarmed “cold gun,” and the focus of the probe has been assistant director Dave Halls, who handed Baldwin the gun and said it was clear, and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who prepped the prop that turned out to be loaded with one live round.
The enduring question is: How did that deadly bullet get onto the set of a movie where only fake ammunition should have been present?
A search warrant affidavit filed by the sheriff’s department suggests it may have been introduced through the Albuquerque–based company PDQ Arm & Prop and its proprietor Seth Kenney.
According to the new document, Gutierrez-Reed told investigators that Kenney supplied the ammunition and weapons to the Rust production. (The film’s prop master, Sarah Zachry, said that ammunition came from various other sources as well, including Gutierrez-Reed and another individual identified only as “Billy Ray.”) Roughly a week after the shooting, the document says, Kenney told investigators that “he may know where the live rounds came from. Seth described how a couple of years back he received ‘reloaded ammunition’ from a friend.”
Reloaded ammunition is a spent brass casing that is recycled—reloaded with powder and attached with a slug projectile—to create another bullet.
The search warrant affidavit states that Kenney told investigators “the ammunition stuck out to him due to the suspected live round [having] a cartridge with the Starline Brass logo on it.… He described how the company only sells components of ammunition, and not live ammunition, therefore it had to be a reloaded round.”
On November 17, Gutirrez-Reed’s father, Thell Reed, a longtime film armorer himself, told investigators that during live-ammunition training with actors on an earlier film, he brought a canister of real bullets for Kenney to use while they were at a shooting range with the performers. “He said the can still had .45 caliber colt ammunition in it” that was “not factory made.” He said he wanted the bullets back but Kenney kept them.
“Thell stated this ammunition may match the ammunition found on the set of Rust,” the search warrant affidavit said.
The warrant, approved Tuesday by a judge, requested access to Kenney’s company office, but there is not yet any indication what may have been found there. A call placed to Kenney’s company headquarters in Lake Havasu, AZ, was not answered and the voicemail service said it was full.
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