A jury convicted Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, a movie weapons supervisor, of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by actor Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal for the Western movie “Rust.”
The verdict assigned new blame in the October 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after an assistant director last year pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm. Gutierrez-Reed was found not guilty of a charge of tampering with evidence, stemming from accusations that she handed a small bag of possible narcotics to another crew member after the shooting to avoid detection, the Associated Press reports
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The judge ordered the 26-year-old armorer placed into the custody of deputies. Defense attorney Jason Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed will appeal the conviction. Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on “Rust,” was indicted by a grand jury in January on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He was pointing a gun at Hutchins on a movie set outside Santa Fe, N.M., when the gun went off. Baldwin is scheduled for trial in July.
Prosecutors said Gutierrez-Reed unknowingly brought live ammunition onto the movie set, and it remained there for at least 12 days before the fatal shooting, giving the armorer plenty of time to remove it. Prosecutor Kari Morrissey described “constant, never-ending safety failures” on the set of “Rust” and Gutierrez-Reed’s “astonishing lack of diligence” with gun safety. Defense attorneys told jurors that the problems on the set extended beyond Gutierrez-Reed's control, including the mishandling of weapons by Baldwin, citing sanctions and findings by state workplace safety investigators.