Seth Kenney, the owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, which supplied prop weapons and ammunition to the Rust production, is denying that the live rounds on the film’s set came from his company.
In a Thursday interview with Good Morning America, Kenney spoke to ABC News correspondent Kaylee Hartung, telling her that his New Mexico-based company “supplied the guns, the blank ammunition and 50 dummy rounds to the show.” But he denies that the rounds found on set and seized by authorities as part of their investigation came from him, and acknowledges that the FBI is working to learn more about the seized rounds.
“They found four rounds that were close enough to take in with them. They’re not a match, but they were close,” he says. “So there’s something very unique about the live rounds that were found on Rust, but we’ve got to wait for the FBI to do its job.”
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Kenney’s public comments come on the heels of a new search warrant filed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday. The affidavit for the prop shop includes statements from Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed identifying Kenney’s company as providing the Alec Baldwin-produced and -led Western movie production — where cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed in October — with the film’s ammo.
Thell Reed, father of Gutierrez Reed and a longtime Hollywood armorer in his own right, also alleges Kenney asked him to bring additional live ammo to the set of a production they’d previously worked on together so they did not run out. According to statements provided to authorities in the affidavit, Reed arrived with a container of 200 to 300 rounds of “live ammunition,” which Kenney kept.
“The questions of who introduced the live rounds onto the set and why are the central questions in the case. Today’s warrant is a major step toward answering those questions,” said a lawyer representing Gutierrez Reed in a statement sent to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week.
