[TODAY] The attorneys for the armorer in charge of weapons on the set of "Rust" say they are investigating whether someone put a live bullet in a box of dummy rounds with the purpose of "sabotaging the set," resulting in the death of a cinematographer from a prop gun fired by star Alec Baldwin. Jason Bowles and Robert Gorence, the attorneys for armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, 24, spoke exclusively on TODAY Wednesday about how they believed a live round ended up in the gun fired by Baldwin, which has made their client a focus of the investigation into the death of Halyna Hutchins.
Bowles said there was a box of bullets on the set labeled as dummy rounds that Gutierrez-Reed pulled from to load the gun. He believed it was possible a third party may have put a live round in the box.
"I believe that somebody who would do that would want to sabotage the set, want to prove point, want to say that they’re disgruntled, they’re unhappy," Bowles told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie. "And we know that people had walked off the set the day before."
Asked if he thought a crew member could be a suspect, Bowles said "I think you can’t rule anybody out at this point."
"We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn’t have been there," Bowles said. "We have people who had left the set, who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a time frame between 11 (a.m.) and 1 (p.m.), approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene."
Gorence added that the film set's prop ammunition was in a truck "that was completely unattended at all times, giving someone access and opportunity."
NBC News has not verified Bowles' allegation that firearms were left unattended on set during that time period or Gorence's allegation that the ammunition was left unsupervised in a prop truck.