A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
Weren’t they firing rounds off for fun during breaks? Or was that claim never substantiated
Not that it makes it better but it would explain how it happened
That was never alledged during the trial itself. There was live round practice, but it was done properly at a fireing range.
The prosecution’s theory was that they came from a different set which did use live rounds. Reed brought dummies herself (instead of going through the prop house for everything) due to shortages.
The defenses theory was that their prop house messed up and provided live rounds with their dummies.
The Variety article on the closing arguments is fairly succinct.
The prosecution has argued that the evidence shows Gutierrez Reed inadvertently brought them to set, mingled among dummy rounds. In a police interview, Gutierrez Reed said she brought some dummies that were loose in a bag in her car and were left over from her previous job as armorer on “The Old Way,” a Nicolas Cage film.
“I’m not telling you that Hannah Gutierrez intended to bring live rounds on set,” Morrissey said. “I’m telling you that she was negligent. She was thoughtless. She was careless… For all we know those dummy rounds were floating around the set of ‘The Old Way,’ and Nicolas Cage is lucky to have walked away with his life.”
Throw in the fact that she apparently didn’t even give the rounds a little shake to confirm that they were empty except for the little BB rattling around in there, and “without due caution and circumspection” is a slam dunk. Baldwin’s case is a little more iffy, but certainly a reasonable one to bring to a jury.
Was Baldwin wrong on anything? Was he not just given the gun or were there other things at play?
Bullshit. You test and inspect everything that goes into a actor’s hands doesn’t matter what it is particularly when it comes to fx and stunts. Throwing shade on a prop house is a skeezeball move. Our industry has best practice checks that you do at multiple points - upon purchase before the day, when you load up and immediately before you hand over the weapon. Even if they somehow bought their live rounds from a prop house you would have to ignore at least three levels of check you should be doing to get that far, nevermind the weapon was left on a cart and handed over by someone unauthorized.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a breakaway ceramic piece or a round - you buy extra then what you need for camera and you check…
Tbh that’s worse.
Willfully violating protocol and allowing live ammo to be near, let alone loaded into, the prop gun. That makes them even more culpable.
