The father of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the 24-year-old armorer of “Rust,” said he doesn’t believe his daughter will face jail time.
Thell Reed spoke to ABC News about the tragic accident that left the film’s cinematographer dead after Alec Baldwin accidentally fired a live round on set.
Reed, a veteran Hollywood armorer in the movie industry, said he was “not worried” about his daughter’s fate.
“The sheriff’s department will get to the bottom of this,” he said.
Some have pointed blame at Gutierrez-Reed, who was in charge of all the film’s weapons, blaming her for the Oct. 21 incident on the New Mexico set when a prop gun held by Baldwin fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.
No charges have been filed over the incident and the investigation is ongoing.
Reed said his daughter was raised on movie sets and understands film safety. “She didn’t need any more training, she’s got me,” Reed said.
Gutierrez-Reed was not in the room when the accident happened and her lawyer Jason Bowles told ABC News she was not the one who handed the gun to Baldwin.
Her dad said he “didn’t like” that his daughter had to do both prop duties and armor duties for “Rust,” and said she complained about it to him.
“They should have had her on set,” Reed said, adding she would have checked the gun one more time before giving it to Baldwin. “She does the job as good as I do now.”
Reed has worked on movies like “Django Unchained” and “Tombstone” and is widely respected in the field.
Baldwin maintains he did not pull the trigger, telling ABC News in a previous interview that “someone is responsible for what happened, and I can’t say who that is, but I know it’s not me.” In a teary interview, Baldwin bizarrely said he didn’t feel any guilt about the incident because he wasn’t to blame.
The shooting happened on the same day that several crew members walked off the set in protest of purportedly unsafe and subpar working conditions.
“In my opinion, no … I did not observe any safety or security issues,” Baldwin said of his time on set.
“Rust” was Gutierrez-Reed’s second film as armorer and her lawyer has claimed she might have been framed.
“We are convinced that this was sabotage and Hannah is being framed. We believe that the scene was tampered with as well before the police arrived,” Bowles said in November.
