Death on the set of “Rust”: gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez Reed found guilty of manslaughter

This was declared by a court of the First Judicial District of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the United States guilty of manslaughter to Hannah Gutiérrez Reed, gunsmith during the filming of the film “Rust” in which the director of photography Halyna Hutchins accidentally died in 2021.

The person also responsible for the security protocol, acquitted of the other charge of falsification of evidence, faces a sentence of up to 18 months in prison and received a precautionary custody order after the verdict delivered by the jury after two weeks of testimony.

Gutiérrez-Reed – the first person to be tried in this case – was considered by the Prosecutor’s Office to be the person “main culprit” in Hutchins’ death on October 21, 2021 in a shooting in which the actor Alec Baldwin was also involved, whose judicial process will begin on July 9.

The gunsmith was the one who loaded the prop gun that Baldwin would later use during the recording and from which the bullet that killed Hutchins came out. “Rust” director Joel Souza was also injured in this accident.

This Wednesday, the jury largely agreed that Gutiérrez-Reed acted negligently by not adequately verifying that the ammunition of the .45 caliber revolver used in the filming of this western was not real, so the death of the cinematographer was a “foreseeable consequence” of his way of proceeding.

For her part, Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey, in her closing arguments, determined that the gunsmith’s actions constituted an act a “disconcerting violation” of security protocol when filming scenes with weapons established in the film industry.

Gutiérrez-Reed’s legal defense argued throughout the trial that the reduction in security costs to make this film, for which Baldwin was also a producer, caused her to have an excessive workload and she was unable to concentrate on tasks purely related to weapons and ammunition. .

The gunsmith had also been accused in the months before the trial of having consumed cocaine during the filming of “Rust” and of having manipulated evidence by trying to hide the drugs through a member of his team on the day of the police investigation on the set.

However, these charges could not be proven and the further charge against him was dismissed this Wednesday.

The gunsmith’s trial included Souza as a witness; first assistant director Dave Halls, who avoided prison by taking a plea deal; producer Gabrielle Pickle; as well as veteran gunsmith Thell Reed (Hannah’s stepfather) and representatives of the company that supplied the cartridges for the shooting.

In January, the prosecutor in charge of investigating the case had offered the gunsmith “preferential treatment” if he provided information useful to the case, he said. Variety.

Last year, much of the original cast and crew of “Rust” reunited in the state of Montana to finish filming the film in what the production described as a tribute to Halyna Hutchins with her husband serving as producer executive.

On January 19, a grand jury decided to re-indict Baldwin for “manslaughter” of Hutchins, three months after special prosecutors presented the case to the grand jury after receiving analysis of the gun used on set. He was acquitted in April 2023. The actor has always supported the version according to which he never pulled the trigger of the revolver he was holding, but that it was detonated due to a mechanical failure.