New Search Warrant Details Possible Source of Live Bullet in Fatal Alec Baldwin ‘Rust’ Shooting

A New Mexico judge granted a search warrant to investigators working on the Rust shooting on Tuesday, possibly revealing the source of the live ammunition used. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office provided the warrant to CNN, which showed that they are looking into the vendor PDQ Arm and Prop. Based on their information so far, this may be where the armorer got the live round that Alec Baldwin fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza.

The sheriff’s office told reporters that they had interviewed Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, who said that either she or prop master Sarah Zachry had picked up ammunition for the movie from PDQ Arm and Prop. She remembered dealing with a supplier named Seth Kenney, leading to Tuesday’s warrant. Police have already interviewed Kenney, and they now see two possible ways the live ammo ended up on the film set.

The first involves Reed’s father, Thell Reed, a film industry veteran who has done his own work with dangerous props. He told detectives that he had worked with Kenney earlier this year on a different production, and given him an “ammo can” containing live rounds for training purposes. He signed an affidavit saying that Kenney had never given him back those bullets.

“After several attempts to get it back from Seth, Seth advised Thell to ‘write it off.’ Thell stated this ammunition may match the ammunition found on the set of Rust,” reads the warrant. It says that Kenney told detectives that those bullets could have conceivably been mixed up in his supply of blanks used for filming. However, he later called detectives back to say that he had also been in possession of “reloaded ammunition” from a friend, which might have been live as well.

Meanwhile, police are also looking into other sources of ammunition used on the set of Rust thanks to a tip from Zachry. The prop master told them that Gutierrez Reed had brought some rounds from a previous production to the set, and had also acquired ammo from a source she knew as “Billy Ray.”

For now, the warrant applies only to Kenney’s prop store. The vendor did not respond to CNN’s request for further comment. Gutierrez Reed’s attorney, Jason Bowles, told reporters that this warrant is “a huge step forward today to unearth the full truth of who put the live rounds on the Rust set. We trust that the FBI will now compare and analyze the ‘live rounds’ seized from the set to evidence seized in the search warrant to conclusively determine where the live rounds came from.”