A member of the Rust crew sued star and producer Alec Baldwin, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, first assistant director David Halls, and others, accusing the production of negligence in last month’s deadly on-set shooting.
Serge Svetnoy, chief of lighting for Rust, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming he was narrowly missed by the bullet shot by Baldwin that killed the film’s director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and wounded director Joel Souza on a set just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages for Svetnoy as well as a jury trial.
“This incident was caused by the negligent acts and omission of Defendants, and each of them, as well as their agents, principals, and employers,” the complaint states. “Simply put, there was no reason for a live bullet to be placed in that .45 Colt revolver to be present anywhere on the Rust set, and the presence of a bullet in a revolver posed a lethal threat to everyone in its vicinity.”
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The suit also shared what Svetnoy believes to be the chain of custody for the .45 Colt revolver that killed Hutchins on Oct. 21.
Svetnoy alleges the chain of custody began when prop master Sarah Zachry retrieved the gun and failed to properly check the gun before handing it to Gutierrez-Reed. Then, the lawsuit alleges, Gutierrez-Reed loaded the gun for an upcoming scene and then either failed to check the gun for any ammunition or loaded the gun with the ammunition herself. Svetnoy alleges Gutierrez-Reed either released or allowed the gun to be released with one piece of ammunition in it before Halls retrieved the gun and failed to inspect it.
Halls shouted “cold gun,” indicating that there should not have been live ammunition in the gun, before handing it to Baldwin, according to court papers. But law enforcement officials later determined it did contain a live bullet.
Svetnoy previously spoke out about the safety of the set and who he held responsible for the fatality. In a Facebook post on Oct. 24, Svetnoy singled out 24-year-old Gutierrez-Reed as not being a professional given her age.
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“I’m sure that we had the professionals in every department, but one — the department that was responsible for the weapons,” Svetnoy said in the post. “There is no way a twenty-four-year-old woman can be a professional with armory; there is no way that her more-or-less the same-aged friend from school, neighborhood, Instagram, or God knows where else, can be a professional in this field. Professionals are the people who have spent years on sets, people who know this job from A to Z; These are the people who have the safety on set at the level of reflexes; they do not need to be told to put the sandbag on a tripod, fix the ladder on the stage, or fence off the explosion site. They have it in their blood.”
Lawyers for Gutierrez-Reed, who oversaw weapons in the low-budget Western film, previously released a statement saying their client “has no idea where the live rounds came from.” Her lawyer, Jason Bowles, said in a statement on Wednesday that “we are convinced this was sabotage and Hannah is being framed. We believe that the scene was tampered with as well before the police arrived,” according to the Associated Press.
No criminal charges tied to the case have been filed, though an investigation into the safety on the set remains active. Santa Fe-area District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said on ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday that “we do not have any proof” of sabotage.
Baldwin, a lawyer for whom does not appear to have commented on the suit as of Wednesday evening, has mourned the loss of Hutchins and said he believed Hollywood should learn from the incident and implement new measures to ensure better safety with firearms on set, including having police officers present.
“An ongoing effort to limit the use of firearms on set is something I’m extremely interested in,” he said. “Some new measures have to take place: rubber guns, plastic guns, no real armaments on set. That’s not for me to decide. It’s urgent that you understand I’m not an expert in this field.”
