'Rust' Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Receives Max Sentence For Fatal On-Set Shooting
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal 2021 shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of the film “Rust.”
The sentence, reported by the Associated Press, was handed down by Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer in a Santa Fe, New Mexico, court on Monday morning, over a month after Gutierrez-Reed, a movie weapons supervisor, was found guilty.
Jurors determined Gutierrez-Reed was partially responsible for the shooting, finding she unknowingly brought live ammunition to set, in violation of the production’s strict ban on live rounds. The incident took place during shooting for “Rust” outside of Santa Fe in October 2021.
At the film shoot, Gutierrez-Reed improperly loaded the live ammunition into a prop gun, which actor Alec Baldwin was holding when the bullet that killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza was fired.
During sentencing, Judge Sommer placed the bulk of the blame on Gutierrez-Reed, saying, “You were the armorer, the one that stood between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone.”
“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 judge added.
Ahead of the sentencing, lawyer Gloria Allred shared a statement from Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, who lives in Ukraine.
“Time does not heal,” Solovey said in her native language. “It gets worse and worse.”
During the weekslong trial earlier this year, the jury heard testimony from over 30 witnesses. They deliberated for nearly three hours before sharing the guilty verdict.
Prosecutors had asked for Gutierrez-Reed to get the maximum sentence of 18 months in prison, pointing to the armorer’s “complete and total failure to accept responsibility for her actions.”
They cited a jailhouse phone call where Gutierrez-Reed called the jurors “idiots” and said the judge was “paid off.”
Gutierrez-Reed’s defense team had requested she get probation, citing her lack of criminal history and general “record of prior good works and positive things.”
Baldwin, who was also charged with involuntary manslaughter, will go to trial this July.
He pleaded not guilty after a grand jury indicted him on the charges earlier this year.
