Earlier today Variety‘s Gene Maddaus and Ellise Shafter reported portions of a new affidavit regarding last week’s fatal Rust shooting, and that one portion says that Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed has told investigators that “no live ammo is ever kept on set.”
And yet Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza told reporters today that “police have collected 500 rounds of ammunition, including what they suspect to be several live rounds,” according to Forbes‘ Marisa Dellatto. The rounds are “a mix of suspected live rounds, blanks and dummy bullets, and three firearms: the working gun discharged by Baldwin — which they found other rounds in — a real gun modified so that it was non-functioning and a plastic gun that does not shoot.”
I don’t want to go out on a limb or come to conclusions without every last fact considered, but if you were an impartial investigator whom would you be more inclined to believe at this stage — Hannah Guiterrez Reed or Adan Mendoza?
Remember when Bill Clinton said he “never had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski,” when what he really meant that he hadn’t had classical missionary sex with her? Maybe the same thing is going on here regarding the definition of “on set.” Maybe Guiterrez Reed believes that “on set” means “in the immediate vicinity of actual filming of a scene” while Mendoza believes that “on set” means within a few hundred yards of where filming is taking place.