“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty Wednesday of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western movie in 2021.
A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed, 26, after three hours of deliberation, finding she was ultimately responsible for the live rounds on set, one of which k*illed Hutchins when it was fired from a gun held by actor Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal.
Gutierrez-Reed was placed into the custody of deputies following the conviction, which her lawyers said she will appeal. She faces up to 18 months in prison.
The movie weapons supervisor’s parents were at court Wednesday and Gutierrez-Reed’s mother buried her face in her hands as the verdict was delivered.
During the trial, prosecutors said the armorer repeatedly flouted gun-safety protocols that could have detected the live rounds she’s accused of unknowingly bringing onto the movie set at a ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“This was a game of Russian roulette every time an actor had a gun with dummies,” prosecutor Kari Morrissey said during closing arguments.
“Hannah Gutierrez failed to maintain firearms safety, making a fatal accident willful and foreseeable,” said Morrissey.
Gutierrez-Reed faced a second charge, tampering with evidence, of which she was found not guilty.
The armorer’s lawyers had argued that she was being scapegoated over larger safety issues on the Sante Fe set, including Baldwin’s mishandling of weapons.
“It was not in the script for Mr. Baldwin to point the weapon,” defense attorney Jason Bowles told jurors.
“She didn’t know that Mr. Baldwin was going to do what he did,” said Bowles, adding that nobody working on “Rust” thought there were live rounds on set.
The verdict pins a large part of the blame of Hutchins’ de*ath on the armorer after the film’s assistant director David Halls pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm last year.
Baldwin, Rust’s star actor and co-producer, was indicted in January on a charge of involuntary manslaughter.
He was pointing a gun at Hutchins on the movie set when the gun went off with a live bullet loaded in the chamber, kil*ling her and wounding director Joel Souza.
Baldwin has maintained he never pulled the trigger – which contradicts the FBI’s ruling that the revolver could not have fired without the trigger being clipped.
His case is scheduled to go to trial in July.
