Jury hears recording of Gutierrez-Reed speak about mystery box with live ammo

Feb. 28—Three weeks after the high-profile shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the Rust film set, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed told a local detective the rounds she had loaded into Alec Baldwin's gun might have come from a box she'd never seen before.

"It was kind of peculiar, actually, now that I think of it," she told Santa Fe County sheriff's Cpl. Alexandra Hancock on Nov. 9, 2021.

Prosecutors played a video of the interview for jurors in state District Court on Wednesday, the sixth day of Gutierrez-Reed's trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence.

Hancock took the stand Wednesday, testifying about her investigation into how six live rounds had ended up on the set and into a revolver that fired the fatal shot. She said she had found "circumstantial" evidence indicating Gutierrez-Reed was the source of the live ammunition.

Hutchins died Oct. 21, 2021, after she was struck by a bullet that came from a prop revolver Baldwin was wielding during a rehearsal at a movie ranch near Santa Fe. The same bullet hit film director Joel Souza in the shoulder after passing through Hutchins' body.

Baldwin, a producer of the film as well as its star, is also charged with involuntary manslaughter and is expected to stand trial in July.

He has said he didn't pull the trigger during the rehearsal inside a makeshift church at the Bonanza Creek Ranch. An FBI firearms examiner testified earlier this week, however, the gun would not have fired without the hammer being cocked and the trigger pulled "or depressed."

Gutierrez-Reed who was 24 at the time of the shooting, said in the interview with Hancock Colt .45 dummies for the gun had been hard to come by, and she'd had to use some of her own, left in her car from another job, to supplement the ones supplied by Albuquerque-based PDQ Arm & Prop.

So, when she saw the unfamiliar box of ammunition, she was surprised.

"This box was kind of just sitting right next to my space on this extra bag I bring to carry guns in," she said. "I thought it was kind of weird ... considering it was just sitting on top of my stuff."

She added, "I think it just said 'dummies' on it. And it was not the usual font I'm used to, either."

She examined the rounds. "As I picked them up, they were jingling ... so that means they were dummies," she said.

Gutierrez-Reed told Hancock she had checked to ensure the rounds were dummies before loading them in the revolver. It was unclear whether she meant she had checked each round individually or had checked more generally to determine if the box contained dummies.

One of the rounds wouldn't load into Baldwin's revolver that morning, Gutierrez-Reed said, so she left a space in the cylinder empty.

After lunch she quickly cleaned the gun and loaded one more round.

In the aftermath of the shooting, assistant director David Halls handed her the gun, and she opened it and saw one of the rounds had discharged, Gutierrez-Reed said. She dumped the remaining rounds in her hand, she said, and handed them to prop master Sarah Zachry.

"I said, 'Go check that [expletive] box,' " Gutierrez-Reed told the detective.

A little while later, she asked Zachry if she'd checked the box, she said, and Zachry replied, "Yeah, there were some bad ones in there."

Following a vigil for Hutchins two days later, Zachry came to her hotel room and told her "more than half of that box were bad ones," Gutierrez-Reed told Hancock.

Hancock told jurors her investigation into the shooting turned up no evidence the owner of PDQ Arm & Prop, Seth Kenney, was the source of live ammunition found on the set.

Kenney's company has been identified as a supplier of guns and ammunition to the Rust set, but he has never been named as a suspect and has worked closely with investigators to help determine the source of the live rounds, according to testimony presented during the trial.

The detective also said she'd found no evidence connecting Zachry, Kenney's employee, to the bullets.

But, she said, there was evidence implicating Gutierrez-Reed.

Asked by special prosecutor Kari Morrissey to point to such evidence, Hancock said, "There's a lot of things."

"That box that [Gutierrez-Reed] identified in her interview when I asked her to show me what a box of hers would look like, she identified one on her phone," the detective said. "That picture on her phone matched exactly that box that we had.

"You know, she was the one that handed that box to [another deputy] stating that that was the box that she was pulling from," she added.

"Did you ever discover any evidence as to who loaded the live round in the gun?" Morrissey asked.

"In Hannah's interview she told me she was the one that loaded Alec's gun," the detective answered.

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Jason Bowles, Hancock testified she had found no "direct" evidence Gutierrez-Reed brought live rounds on the set.

Bowles also questioned the detective about why a prop truck where guns and ammunition were stored was not searched until about a week after the incident, leading to a heated dispute between prosecutors and defense attorneys about when the state had obtained information from Gutierrez-Reed that was later used as the basis for a warrant to search the truck.

The attorneys raised their voices and the jury was sent out of the room.

State District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer settled the matter by deciding jurors would be instructed to pay close attention to the recorded interview during their deliberations, which she did when they were brought back into the courtroom.

The pacing of the trial was significantly slowed Wednesday by technical difficulties prosecutors had with the video. The delay appeared to have forced the postponement of testimony from assistant director David Halls.

Halls had reportedly accepted the revolver from Gutierrez-Reed and later handed it to Baldwin before the fatal shot, calling out, "Cold gun" to indicate the firearm was safe. He pleaded no contest March 31, 2023, to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced the same day to six months of supervised probation.

He came to the courthouse Wednesday but was not called to the stand.

Gutierrez-Reed emerged from the courtroom on a break as Halls was standing in the hallway, and the pair shared what appeared to be a heartfelt embrace.

The trial, which began last week, will continue Thursday and is expected to last several more days.