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.
Based on testimony and evidence presented at the Reed trial:
- He was not paying attention during his gun training.
- He broke gun protocals throughout the filming. Including fireing a (blank loaded) gun after cut was called.
- (The actual event) He pointed a “prop” gun at a real person and pulled the trigger. Even with a cleared gun, this is something that is not supposed to be done. Additionally, this was during a “blocking” session, so the camera was not even rolling. He was not supposed to be using the prop gun at all for this.
Even if the gun was loaded with blanks, this even would likely still have caused an injury (and possibly death, although likely not).
Baldwin will likely argue that Reed was supposed to know all of this and stopped him before the accident happened.
