ANOTHER LOG ON THE FIRE

Father of ‘Rust’ Armorer Says She Had ‘Complained’ About Film Role

Weapons specialist Thell Reed said that Hannah Gutierrez-Reed had “been raised around gun safety since she was a little girl.”

The father of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the “inexperienced” Rust armorer embroiled in the fallout of the set’s fatal prop gun misfiring, defended her in a Tuesday interview, suggesting the shooting might not have happened had she been in the church where the scene was being filmed. On Good Morning America, Thell Reed—himself a veteran movie armorer—said, “That one time they should have had her on set, she would’ve rechecked that gun. If there was a live round placed there, she would have found it.”

Instead, as Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney Jason Bowles described it, the 24-year-old had been away from the rehearsal working with the props department. Reed said that he “didn’t like” that his daughter was shouldering both armorer and prop assistant duties. He added that Gutierrez-Reed had “complained about it, too.” Gutierrez-Reed had “been raised around gun safety since she was a little girl,” according to Reed. “She knows what to do,” he added. “She does the job as good as I do now.” Both he and Bowles reiterated the belief sabotage had caused the accident, which killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. “Sabotage is the most likely possibility, probability,” Bowles said. Thell cryptically suggested there was “a lot of motive there.”