Cinematographer found guilty of involuntary manslaughter over fatal film set shooting of HALYNA HUTCHINS

Sunday, March 10, 2024 – Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on set of the film Rust, has been found guilty for her role in the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a New Mexico film set.

Hutchins was fatally shot by Alec Baldwin while the actor was rehearsing a scene for the movie.

Baldwin, who also served as a co-producer on the film, was pointing a prop gun at Hutchins during rehearsal on October 2021 when the weapon fired, hitting the 42-year-old and wounding the film’s director, Joel Souza.

A New Mexico jury found Gutierrez-Reed, who was responsible for ensuring that all firearms on the set were safe, guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors had alleged that the weapons supervisor loaded a fully functioning .45 revolver used by Baldwin with dummy rounds and at least one live round.

“She was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless,” prosecutor Kari Morrissey said in the trial’s closing statements.

She described “constant, never-ending safety failures” on the film set and said Gutierrez-Reed showed an “astonishing lack of diligence” with gun safety.

Gutierrez-Reed had also faced a charge of tampering with evidence, but the jury found her not guilty on that count. After the verdict was read, her attorney said Gutierrez-Reed would appeal the conviction.

Gutierrez-Reed, who was taken into custody immediately, faces up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. She had pleaded not guilty and her attorneys argued that she was being used as a scapegoat in the incident, which they said Baldwin was ultimately responsible for.

Baldwin has also been charged with involuntary manslaughter and is accused of causing Hutchins’s death either by negligence or “total disregard or indifference” for safety. He has pleaded not guilty, and will face his own trial in July.

David Halls, the film’s assistant director, was sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence with unsupervised probation, a $500 fine, 24 hours of community service and a firearms safety class on a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon. Halls testified for the defense, speaking to Reed’s competence as an armorer and stating that he took responsibility for the shooting.

“I let a safety check pass,” Halls said during his testimony.