Kari Morrissey, the lead special prosecutor, has been asking a crime scene technician about the types of ammunition she took from the “Rust” set.
Marissa Poppell, who works for the Santa Fe Sherriff’s Department, said she took dummy rounds and blank ammunition from the set while executing search warrants related to the investigation. She explained to the jury how to tell the difference between them.
Showing photos that Poppell took of items on the set, Morrissey asks her to identify the pieces of ammunition that she suspected were live rounds.
Poppell describes how she sent those to the FBI for further testing. She also says she found a total of six live rounds on set, one of them was a spent shell casing.
Poppell testifies that she also searched an office in Albuquerque that belonged to a props supply company. She tells prosecutors that she found live rounds there.
Other FBI testing: Poppell says she sent the projectile that was removed from “Rust” director Joel Souza’s shoulder to the FBI along with the gun that was involved in the shooting. She says she wanted the gun to go through functionality testing.
She testifies that she was interested in a “drop test” to see if the gun could go off without the trigger being pulled.
