gunsmith Hannah Gutierrez-Reed found guilty of manslaughter

She faces up to 18 months in prison. Alec Baldwin, star and producer of the film, is also charged with manslaughter. His trial is expected to take place in July.

The western gunsmith Rust, produced by Alec Baldwin and on the set of which the director of photography was killed by a shot, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday March 6 by an American court. Responsible for weapons on this production with a tight budget, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was accused of repeated negligence by prosecutors. She faces up to 18 months in prison. His sentence will not be determined until next month.

Disregard for safety rules

The filming of Rust had turned into a tragedy in October 2021 on a ranch in New Mexico (southwest of the United States). Alec Baldwin had pointed a weapon supposed to contain only blank bullets, but a very real projectile had killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza.

For two weeks, the trial tried to explain how this deadly bullet, one of the many live munitions collected by investigators, could have ended up on the set, in defiance of the safety rules common to the entire cinema industry. .

During the hearings, the jurors notably viewed images showing Alec Baldwin handling weapons in a dangerous manner, pointing them at other members of the team, without the gunsmith intervening. “This is not a case where someone made a mistake by accidentally putting a live bullet into that gun.“, argued prosecutor Kari Morrissey during her indictment on Wednesday.

“Endless failures”

“This case concerns consistent and never-ending security failures that resulted in the death of one human being and nearly killed another“, she added. According to the prosecutor, the gunsmith was once again negligent on the morning of the tragedy: she was not present when Alec Baldwin was preparing his scene, and had left the twenty weapons used by unsupervised production.

“She left the gun in the church“where the tragedy took place,”contrary to all the standards that govern the work of gunsmiths on the sets“, insisted the prosecutor. “As many witnesses have told you, she left guns unattended all the time. October 21, 2021 was nothing unusual.“

Kari Morrissey accused the gunsmith of bringing live ammunition onto the set and failing to carry out the necessary checks to ensure that the ammunition put into the gun was safe: blank bullets produce an easily identifiable clicking sound when shaking the weapon. “If it does not check the dummy ammunition (…) to ensure that they are indeed blank bullets, (…) it is a game of Russian roulette that begins every time ‘an actor carries a weapon“, tackled the prosecutor.

“Scapegoat”

The prosecution also accused the gunsmith of having concealed cocaine, which she consumed outside of her working hours, after the tragedy. On this point, the jurors found him not guilty. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was used as a scapegoat for a production that neglected security for financial reasons and turned it into a “clear culprit“, argued Jason Bowles, one of his lawyers.

According to him, the young woman had no way of knowing that live ammunition had infiltrated the set and believed that production had only obtained blank bullets. “Responsibility lies with production, as in any organization. It starts at the top“. He also denounced the producers’ eagerness to denounce her to investigators, the day after the tragedy: “What the big guys want (…) is to continue working to finish the film, to earn money“.

Alec Baldwin, star and producer of the film, is also charged with manslaughter. His trial is expected to take place in July. The filming of “Rust” had picked up several months later and ended in Montana, with Halyna Hutchins’ widower Matthew serving as executive producer. At the end of 2022, he abandoned the civil proceedings he had initiated against Alec Baldwin at the end of an agreement the amount of which was not disclosed.