Rust armourer sentenced to 18 months in prison after fatal on-set shooting

The chief weapons handler on Rust has been sentenced to 18 months in prison more than two years after the fatal, on-set shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins at the hands of movie star Alec Baldwin.

Armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March after accidentally loading a live round into Baldwin’s prop revolver. Earlier this week, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer sentenced Gutierrez-Reed to prison when she failed to take responsibility for her role in the shooting.

“You were the armourer – the one that stood between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone,” Judge Sommer said on Monday. “You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon. But for you Ms Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother.”

The 18 month sentence is the most substantial criminal punishment to arise during the legal turmoil following Hutchins’ death in 2021.

Back in March, a Santa Fe jury took less than two hours to find Gutierrez-Reed guilty of involuntary manslaughter, with prosecutors accusing her of failing to carry-out necessary safety procedures. “She was negligent, she was careless, she was thoughtless,” said prosecutor Kari Marrissey, explaining that the armourer’s actions resulted in the death of 42 year-old Hutchins and the injury of film director Joel Souza.

Gutierrez-Reed’s defense said that the incident was a “cascade of tragedy” that resulted from “multiple systems failures by multiple people,” asking the judge to consider probation rather than prison.

“I beg you, please don’t give me more time,” the armourer said to the court on Monday.
Quoting a series of recent calls that Gutierrez-Reed made from the county jail where she has been held since her conviction, Judge Sommers said that the weaponry supervisor has failed to take responsibility for the accident.

“Hannah says ‘people have accidents and people die. It’s an unfortunate part of life’, but it doesn’t mean she should be in jail,” Sommers quoted, deciding that probation would not be appropriate given the circumstances and serving time in a detention centre rather than prison “would be giving [her] a pass [she does] not deserve.”

While Gutierrez-Reed has been sentenced to 18 months in jail, the Rust case is far from complete. Baldwin, who mistakenly shot Hutchins while rehearsing on set, will stand trial on 10 July after being indicted of involuntary manslaughter by a New Mexico grand jury in January.