‘Rust’ on Trial: Alec Baldwin’s Armorer Faces Involuntary Manslaughter Charges
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Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was a fast-rising star in the world of indie film when she was hired to helm photography for Alec Baldwin’s pandemic passion project — a low-budget Old West action flick titled Rust. She was “so excited” about the 21-day shoot scheduled at the picturesque Bonanza Creek Ranch in New Mexico, her close friend told Rolling Stone.
Born in Ukraine and a married mother of a nine-year-old son, Hutchins already had been dubbed one of American Cinematographer’s top new talents and received festival accolades for the 2020 arthouse superhero movie Archenemy starring Joe Manganiello. By all accounts, she was on the cusp of the next big leap in her impressive career.
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What happened next will be the subject of a closely watched criminal trial set to begin Wednesday in downtown Santa Fe. The stunning tragedy that sent shockwaves through the film industry unfolded in the early afternoon of October 21, 2021 inside a tiny wooden church built in a mock Western town on the dusty former cattle ranch.
The broad details are well-known: Baldwin, acting as both star and producer of the film, was rehearsing a gun draw with Hutchins, working on camera angles, when he accidentally discharged a prop weapon that had been loaded, somehow, with a live round. The bullet exploded from the .45-caliber Colt revolver, blasted through Hutchins’ chest and lodged in the shoulder of director Joel Souza. Hutchins, 42, was airlifted to a hospital but did not survive.
Investigators quickly learned that the armorer hired to manage weapons, ammunition and gun safety on set was a 24-year-old rookie named Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. While others have been criminally charged in the high-profile case – including Baldwin – Gutierrez-Reed will be the first to face a jury.
The stepdaughter of veteran Hollywood armorer Thell Reed, Gutierrez-Reed has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering. She has denied any wrongdoing, saying others bear responsibility for a long list of documented safety breakdowns on set. She says her pleas for more time to focus on gun prep and actor training — as opposed to her competing and lower-paid duties as a props assistant — were brushed aside. Her lawyers have suggested she may have been the victim of sabotage. Prosecutors, meanwhile, allege Gutierrez-Reed was negligent, repeatedly intoxicated and hungover during the shoot, failing at the most basic responsibilities of her important job.
“The only type of ammunition that should have been present on the set was blank and dummy ammunition,” prosecutors wrote in their summary of the case filed earlier this month. “Ms. Gutierrez inadvertently loaded a fully functioning .45 caliber single action army revolver with dummy rounds and at least one live round and provided the gun to Alec Baldwin to use for a scene in the movie. Predictably, Mr. Baldwin manipulated the gun, and the gun went off, unexpectedly killing Ms. Hutchins.”
Prosecutors allege photographs depict live rounds on the Rust set on four separate dates before the day of the shooting and that six live rounds were ultimately recovered, including the bullet that killed Hutchins. “The live rounds were located in the gun being manipulated by Alec Baldwin, in a box of supposed dummy ammunition brought on the set by Ms. Gutierrez, in the gun belt worn by the character in the movie played by actor Jensen Ackles and in the bandolier worn by (Mr.) Baldwin,” the paperwork states. Two live rounds were found on top of the prop cart used by Gutierrez-Reed.
While Gutierrez-Reed’s defense team has floated the theory that a disgruntled crew member possibly planted the live ammunition, prosecutors claim there’s no evidence to support that. They instead believe Gutierrez-Reed was indulging in drugs and alcohol and simply got careless. They claim text messages extracted from her phone show that when someone asked if she needed any cocaine one week prior to arriving on set, Gutierrez-Reed replied, “Already got some.” They say a hotel employee who befriended Gutierrez-Reed reported that the armorer was in possession of ammunition for the movie while also smoking weed, off hours, in her hotel room. In a Jan. 31 filing, prosecutors included excerpts from several of the allegedly damaging text exchanges.
“Make sure your weed is out of sight and the room doesn’t smell like weed,” an unidentified hotel worker texted Gutierrez-Reed the night before the shooting, referring to another hotel worker coming to her room. “Lmao I know that, wasn’t gonna have him check it out today,” Gutierrez-Reed responded. In a separate text to an unidentified transportation crew member that same night, Gutierrez-Reed allegedly wrote, “I might go smoke in the jacuzzi soon,” and, “Headed down to get high out back.”
Prosecutors say other texts suggest Gutierrez-Reed was using cocaine as a stimulant on the demanding, high-pressure set. In one exchange from Oct. 17, 2021, Gutierrez-Reed was texting with an unidentified crew member about their long hours and wrote, “I got something that can wake you up too.” In possibly their most explosive claim, prosecutors allege Gutierrez-Reed handed off a bag of cocaine to a crew member named Rebecca Smith just hours after the deadly shooting. Smith allegedly told police that she visited Gutierrez-Reed shortly after the armorer spoke with investigators and that Gutierrez-Reed placed a baggie containing a white powdery substance in her hand as she was leaving. Smith allegedly said she believed the bag contained cocaine, so she ditched it in a hotel trash can. Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed texted Smith two days after the shooting, asking for her “stuff” back. When investigators asked what Gutierrez-Reed was referring to, Smith purportedly replied, “a bag of cocaine.” (The alleged transfer of narcotics is the basis for the evidence tampering charge that was added against Gutierrez-Reed in June.)
In another exchange that a judge ruled inadmissible at trial, prop master Sarah Zachry texted prop supplier Seth Kenney that Gutierrez-Reed was “blackout drunk” during the “weekend” before the fatal shooting. “Oh god, no,” Kenney responded on October 25, 2021.
Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyers have called the allegation their client was hungover or high at the time of the shooting recklessly false. In a Feb. 1 filing asking to sever the evidence tampering charge, they said the state’s allegations were centered on “blatant falsehoods built on inadmissible and highly prejudicial speculation.” They said the alleged cocaine was never recovered, never tested, and that the law enforcement personnel who interacted with Gutierrez-Reed immediately after the shooting — police who are trained to notice when suspects or witnesses are under the influence — never “observed or noted” any intoxication.
The defense lawyers also point to the Occupational Health and Safety Bureau (OHSB) investigation that found a long list of safety breakdowns on the Rust set. The bureau found that Gutierrez-Reed was scolded by line producer Gabrielle Pickle a week before Hutchins’ death because she was prioritizing guns over other props. “It has been brought to my attention that you are focusing far more on Armor and not supporting props as needed,” Pickle wrote in the chastising email excerpted in the OHSB’s report. Gutierrez-Reed responded that she needed time to focus on guns for “everyone’s safety.” Three days later, Pickle told Gutierrez-Reed there would be “no more” training days, “Like training Alec and such.” According to Gutierrez-Reed’s defense, oversights and bad decisions made by others on set have been thoroughly documented, whereas claims about Gutierrez-Reed’s sobriety are conjecture.
Prosecutors say they’re not worried about the case they’ve built. “The state concedes that it cannot prove with direct evidence such as blood test that Ms. Gutierrez may have been impaired – at least slightly – on October 21, 2021, but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence that a jury should be able to hear it and consider it because consistent substance abuse is relevant to the element of negligence,” prosecutors argued in pre-trial filings. They called it “absurd” to suggest that Gutierrez-Reed handed “a small bag of powdered sugar” to Smith and then tried for four weeks “to get her baggie of powdered sugar returned.”
At a hearing in the case last week, New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer rejected the defense request to sever the tampering charge into a separate trial and ruled some of the texts about Gutierrez-Reed’s drug use could be shown to jurors. “The relevant ones are the one where she’s smoking weed with ammo in the hotel room, and that she’s smoking in the jacuzzi,” the judge said. She also allowed the “after the fact” texts about the alleged cocaine hand-off.
Beyond the allegations of intoxication, prosecutors contend Gutierrez-Reed also “frequently” left guns and ammunition unattended on her prop cart or elsewhere during the film shoot. They say this practice is relevant because her “own negligence created the opportunity for sabotage, if in fact there was sabotage.” “While Ms. Gutierrez is not charged with intentional homicide, she is charged with homicide based on negligence. There was not one negligent act that led to this tragedy. The tragedy occurred due to a series of negligent acts given that the live rounds were on set well before October 21, 2021,” prosecutors wrote.
After the judge’s Feb. 14 rulings, lead defense lawyer Jason Bowles told Rolling Stone he considered it a win that his side was given a green light to introduce the OHSB probe. “We are pleased with the ruling that (OHSB) findings will be allowed in trial. We are evaluating our options as to the other rulings,” Bowles, a former federal prosecutor, wrote in an email.
A novice armorer whose only other credit as a head armorer was for the Nicolas Cage Western The Old Way, Gutierrez-Reed is expected to stake much of her defense on the allegation that it was Baldwin who engaged in unsafe behavior when he pointed the gun at Hutchins and manipulated it. Gutierrez-Reed claims that on the day of the shooting — the same day most of the camera crew walked off the set in a protest over working conditions — she would have intervened and stopped Baldwin from pointing the gun had she been allowed inside the church for the rehearsal.
Last month, Baldwin was once again indicted on a charge of involuntary manslaughter after the same charge was dismissed against him last April. He has pleaded not guilty. In a lengthy interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos after the fatal shooting, Baldwin claimed he was following step-by-step instructions from Hutchins seconds before the weapon discharged. “Everything is her direction. She’s guiding me through how she wants me to hold the gun for this angle,” Baldwin said. The actor claimed that after Hutchins confirmed she was able to get a good close-up shot of Baldwin manipulating the weapon, he let go of the hammer. “Bang! The gun goes off,” Baldwin told Stephanopoulos, denying that he ever pulled the trigger.
Prosecutors have been skeptical of Baldwin’s assertion he didn’t depress the trigger. A forensic report commissioned by prosecutors and obtained by the New York Times determined the old-fashioned revolver would have needed about two pounds of pressure on the trigger to discharge a round.
The witness list for the defense suggests Gutierrez-Reed plans to call her stepdad to the stand. Thell Reed is famous for serving as armorer on Hollywood blockbusters including Tombstone, The Quick and the Dead, L.A. Confidential and 3:10 to Yuma. If called, he’s expected to testify that his stepdaughter acted safely when handling guns on the Rust set.
In his interviews with investigators, Reed floated yet another defense theory: that it was Seth Kenney, a prop supplier for Rust, who may have introduced the live rounds to the set. Reed claimed he gave Kenney a bucket containing mixed live and dummy ammo after a training event linked to another production. He purportedly told investigators he suspected the live round that ended up in Baldwin’s prop gun was from that bucket. Kenney has confirmed his Albuquerque-based company, PDQ Arm & Prop, did supply guns and dummy rounds to Rust, but he claimed every dummy round was individually tested before it was sent out.
As prosecutors pursue their cases against Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin, one person closely tied to the deadly shooting already has faced accountability. Assistant Director Dave Halls entered a no-contest plea to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon last Mach. As previously reported by Rolling Stone, Halls admitted to investigators after the shooting that he failed to check all chambers of the revolver before taking it from Gutierrez-Reed, declaring it a “cold gun” — meaning it had no live rounds — and handing it to Baldwin. Under his plea deal, Halls was due to serve six months of unsupervised probation.
After the first criminal case against Baldwin was dropped last year, Rust went back into production to finish its remaining scenes. “Last day of filming RUST in Montana,” Baldwin wrote in an Instagram post shared May 22 that congratulated Souza and the new cinematographer Bianca Cline. “It’s been a long and difficult road. But we reach the end of the trail today,” he wrote. “Nothing less than a miracle.” Producers were shopping the film at the Cannes Film Festival last year but have yet to announce a sale.
Beyond the criminal prosecutions, the deadly shooting also is the subject of multiple civil lawsuits filed by crew members and members of Hutchins’ family. While Hutchins’ husband previously settled a lawsuit against Baldwin and went on to become an executive producer of Rust, Hutchins’ parents and sister are still suing. A lawyer for Hutchins’ Ukraine-based family members tells Rolling Stone they will not be attending Gutierrez-Reed’s trial in person. “They live in a war zone in Ukraine,” lawyer Gloria Allred says. “Our legal team will keep them informed about important evidence in the case. They have no comment at this time.”
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