‘Rust’ Armorer Trial Start Pushed Back to February 2024

The trial for “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been pushed back from December 2023 to February 21, 2024.

Attorneys for Gutierrez-Reed told TheWrap that the date change was necessary to accommodate “scheduling issues with the amount of witnesses that need to be interviewed.”

Gutierrez-Reed, 26, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering, to which she has pled not guilty. She faces up to three years in prison if convicted.

Reed, as the armorer for the “Rust” production, was the one who loaded the revolver that was being held by lead actor Alec Baldwin when it fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza. Prosecutors claim that Reed failed to check whether the bullets she loaded into the revolver were live rounds or blanks.

Baldwin was also initially charged with involuntary manslaughter, but those charges were dropped by the special prosecutors assigned to the case by the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office in April due to a lack of sufficient evidence determining whether the revolver he was holding was functioning properly at the time of Hutchins’ death.

The prosecutors said that their decision to drop the charges “does not absolve Mr. Baldwin of criminal culpability and charges may be refiled.” Last week, a new forensics report on the gun sent to Santa Fe special prosecutors found that the gun had not been modified and could have only discharged if Baldwin pulled the trigger.

“Although Alec Baldwin repeatedly denies pulling the trigger, given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver,” firearms expert Lucien Haag wrote in the report.

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