A crew member on the set of “Rust,” Serge Svetnoy, says the death of cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins on set, was a result of “negligence and unprofessionalism.”
On a public Facebook post Sunday Svetnoy wrote, “I was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Halyna (Hutchins) during this fatal shot that took her life and injured the director Joel Souza.”
He added that he “was holding her in my arms while she was dying,” and “Her blood was on my hands.”
Though Svetnoy doesn’t name her, search warrant documents identified Hannah Gutierrez as the armorer who prepared the gun for Alec Baldwin.
“I'm sure that we had the professionals in every department, but one - the department that was responsible for the weapons. There is no way a twenty-four-year-old woman can be a professional with armory,” wrote Svetnoy. “Professionals are the people who have spent years on sets, people who know this job from A to Z; These are the people who have the safety on set at the level of reflexes; they do not need to be told to put the sandbag on a tripod, fix the ladder on the stage, or fence off the explosion site. They have it in their blood. I'm calling out to the Producers!”
Gutierrez has not responded to CNN's requests for comment.
On a podcast last month, Gutierrez said she had recently finished her first job as head armorer on a film titled "The Old Way" with Nicolas Cage, and that her father had been teaching her about guns since she was 16.
Svetnoy said cost-cutting sacrifices safety. “To save a dime sometimes, you hire people who are not fully qualified for the complicated and dangerous job, and you risk the lives of the other people who are close and your lives as well."
Svetnoy mentions his trauma and the pain of those left behind. “I do not wish anyone to go through what I went through, what her husband @Matt Hutchins and her son Andros went through, and the actor Alec Baldwin, who has been handed a gun on set. He has to live with the thought that he took the life of the human because of unprofessional people.”
CNN has reached out to Svetnoy to elaborate on his criticisms.
The movie's producers did not reply to CNN directly but, a source close to production tells CNN "His Facebook post has a lot of misinformation in it... he said they were penny pinching and didn't hire good people, but this is a union certified set."
"When it comes to safety there were three full safety meetings held since they started production -- and they had a full safety meeting the day of the accident. This notion that no one was addressing safety from covid protocol to weapons on set and procedures is not true. These are not 5 -minute (meetings)," the source said.