‘Rust’ Armorer Reportedly Once Caused Nic Cage to Storm Off Set, Plus: Talk of Criminal Charges

New information has come to light about “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, 24, following a deadly accidental shooting on the set of the western in New Mexico.

On Thursday, news broke that Alec Baldwin fired the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounded writer-director Joel Souza.

Stu Brumbaugh, a key grip on Nicolas Cage’s upcoming western “The Old Way” spoke out to The Wrap, revealing issues on the set of their film in Montana just two months earlier.

He accused Gutierrez Reed of failing to follow basic gun safety protocols regarding weapons on set, and said she fired a gun in the vicinity of cast and crew twice within three days. The second time is when he says Cage stormed off set.

Brumbaugh said Cage yelled, “Make an announcement, you just blew my f—ing eardrums out!”

The grip shared his reaction, “I told the AD, ‘She needs to be let go.’ After the second round, I was pissed off. We were moving too fast. She’s a rookie.” Brumbaugh said he later learned it was Gutierrez Reed’s first film.

He also detailed safety incidents on set that included the armorer carrying live rounds of blanks without a public announcement and carrying pistols under her armpits and rifles in her hands, meaning the pistols were being aimed at people behind her as she walked.

After working on “The Old Way,” Hannah, the daughter of weapons expert Thell Reed, told the “Voices of the West” podcast, “It was also my first time being head armorer as well. You know, I was really nervous about it at first, and I almost didn’t take the job because I wasn’t sure if I was ready, but, doing it, like, it went really smoothly,” she said in September. “The best part about my job is just showing people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns how safe they can be and how they’re not really problematic unless put in the wrong hands.”

The Wrap could not reach Gutierrez Reed for the story, and an assistant director listed on IMDb as well as Cage’s reps declined to comment.

A producer for “The Old Way” denied the incident happened and told the trade, “The details on some of these accounts specifically when it pertains to ‘The Old Way’ have been blown out of proportion.” He added that Gutierrez Reed was working under veteran prop master Jeffrey W. Crow.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe County district attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies tells The New York Times that an investigation of the fatal shooting could take weeks or months and they haven’t “ruled out anything.”

“Everything at this point, including criminal charges, is on the table,” she said. For now, detectives are focused on who loaded the gun, as well as ballistics.

Carmack-Altwies also clarified that the firearm used in the scene was not a prop, but in fact a “legit” gun, calling it “an antique-era appropriate gun.”