'Rust' armorer thought she loaded the gun with dummy rounds, lawyer says

The 'Rust' armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, loaded the gun with what she thought were dummy rounds before Alec Baldwin used it on set, fatally shooting the movie's cinematographer, lawyers for the armorer said in an interview Wednesday.

"There was a box of dummy rounds and the box is labeled dummy. Hannah did take from that box which she by all accounts should have been able to rely on, that contains only dummy rounds," said Gutierrez Reed's lawyer Jason Bowles. "She loaded rounds from that box into the handgun only to later find out -- and she had no idea -- she inspected the rounds, that there was a live round. Now we don't know, however, whether that live round came from that box. We're assuming it did. We're assuming somebody put the live round in that box, which if you think about that, the person who put the live round in the box of dummy rounds had to have the purpose of sabotaging this set. There's no other reason you would do that."

Bowles said, "I think... you can't rule anybody out at this point. because we know a couple of facts: We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn't have been there, at least one live round. We had people who had left the set, who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a timeframe between 11 and one approximately that day in which the firearms at times were unattended. So there was opportunity to tamper with this scene."

Another lawyer for Gutierrez Reed, Robert Gorence, said the prop truck "was completely unattended at all times," leaving "access and opportunity" to access the ammunition.

"The tray was outside the church for over two hours unattended after she had prepped that for what was going to be an afternoon filming session outside of the church," Gorence told NBC.