Videos show distraught 'Rust' armorer who later says live ammunition not kept on set

Feb. 27—Hannah Gutierrez-Reed bowed her head and adverted her eyes when prosecutors showed jurors pictures of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins' fatal gunshot wound Tuesday.

Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on the Rust film set, is charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with Hutchins' October 2021 death on a movie ranch near Santa Fe. She is accused of introducing live bullets onto the set and loading at least one into a gun that fired the fatal shot.

The photographs, showing the bullet entered Hutchins' right armpit area and exited her back below her shoulder blade, were shown in conjunction with the testimony of physician Heather Jarrell of the state Office of the Medical Investigator.

The bullet broke one of Hutchins' ribs, pierced one of her lungs and hit her spine before exiting her body, Jarrell said.

After passing through Hutchins' body, the bullet struck film director Joel Souza in the shoulder, an injury he survived.

Jarrell, who performed the autopsy on Hutchins, determined the cause of her death was a gunshot wound and classified her manner of death as accidental.

"Homicide is described as volitional act caused by another to cause fear, harm or death," Jarrell said. "Intent is not always needed.

"Conversely, for an accident to be applicable, what must not be present is intent to cause severe harm or death," Jarrell said. "Looking at the material that was available to me through law enforcement reports, it was apparent to me there was no obvious intent to cause death."

Jarrell testified on the fifth day of Gutierrez-Reed's jury trial, which started last week and is expected to continue into next week.

The armorer also is charged with tampering with evidence, in connection with an allegation she handed off a baggie of cocaine to another crew member after being interviewed by police.

If convicted of both charges, she faces up to three years in prison.

The film's star and producer, Alec Baldwin — who was holding the gun that discharged the fatal shot — has said he didn't pull the trigger and the gun simply discharged a live bullet. He is also charged with involuntary manslaughter and has entered a plea of not guilty in his case, scheduled to go to trial in July.

Prosecutors have a lengthy witness list in Gutierrez-Reed's trial, scheduled to wrap up March 6. Each day has been packed with witnesses and exhibits, including what seems to be hundreds of photographs of bullets, most of them dummy rounds taken from the Rust set, as the state attempts to educate the jurors on the differences between live and dummy rounds and how firearms function.

Tuesday was no exception.

After hearing from the medical examiner and a cellphone extraction expert, jurors heard testimony from Lucien Haag, an 83-year old criminalist who specializes in shooting reconstructions.

Hagg talked at length about how the FBI damaged the gun Baldwin used in the fatal scene while testing it and said the weapon would have had to have been loaded and cocked, and the trigger pulled "or depressed," for it to fire.

The jury heard from the defendant Tuesday afternoon via several hours of video showing her interactions with investigators on the set the day of the shooting and in two subsequent interviews.

The first of three videos shown in court Tuesday was an eight-minute clip from Santa Fe County sheriff's Cpl. Alexandra Hancock's body-worn camera, taken shortly after the shooting, while Gutierrez-Reed was detained in a law enforcement vehicle.

"Welcome to the worst day of my life," Gutierrez-Reed says to Hancock, who is accompanying her to the restroom.

Hancock told jurors this was standard protocol to make sure potential suspects don't harm themselves or hide evidence.

Throughout their interaction, Gutierrez-Reed makes several distraught utterances about the shooting in the video. She says: "I can't believe Alec Baldwin was holding the gun."

The armorer asks to be put in a more enclosed vehicle because she wants to be out of sight of other crew members.

"I just kind of wish my co-workers could stop seeing me because I already feel super bad," she says. "I just want to get the [expletive] out of here and never show my face in this industry again."

The next two videos show her being interviewed by Hancock and another deputy, first alone and then with her attorney, Jason Bowles, present.

Asked by Hancock if live ammunition is ever kept on set, she says, "No, never."

She tells the detective she'd loaded what prosecutors are calling "the Baldwin gun" — a .45 Colt revolver — with five dummy rounds before lunch, "and there was one that wouldn't go in. So when we got back from lunch, I took the, like, little cleaner ... and cleaned it out really quick and put another dummy in there."

She says she was not inside the church when the shooting occurred. "I was right outside by my cart."

When she first heard the shot, Gutierrez-Reed says, she thought it might be a special effects "popper" and wasn't concerned because she knew she had checked all the rounds in the gun.

"And then I heard them saying, like, 'medic, emergency,' and then I, like, checked in, and I looked and I saw [director Joel Souza] on the ground, and I was like, "What the [expletive]; was that the gun?' And [assistant director David Halls] was like, 'Yes it was a [expletive] gun!' "

She walked in, she says, and was yelled at, so she left.

"Dave brought me the gun, and I opened the gun up and one of the dummies somehow had been discharged," she tells Hancock.

The cartridge that had discharged didn't have a hole and didn't rattle when shaken — markers of a dummy round — so she checked all the others in the gun.

"Just to be clear, the live rounds that were found on set, none of them rattled, did they?" special prosecutor Kari Morrissey asked Hancock at the trial, referring to the six live rounds investigators later found on the set.

"No, they didn't rattle," Hancock answered.

"And none of them had holes did they?" Morrissey asked.

"No," Hancock said.

In the video, Hancock asks Gutierrez-Reed if dummies have ever been known to malfunction.

"Like, what we are dealing with are, like, you know, explosives," Gutierrez-Reed answers. "There's always, like, a chance of, like, you know, safety to be compromised. And that's the issue, and that's what I'm supposed to watch out for on set."

Gutierrez-Reed tells Hancock the rounds had come from PDQ Arm & Prop owner Seth Kenney about a week before the incident. She also says Colt .45 ammunition was in short supply due to the coronavirus pandemic, and at one point she'd collected some spare blanks she'd used on another set from her car and put them in boxes and used them on set.

In a subsequent interview, Gutierrez-Reed says she's never really had any formal training but mostly learned from her father, Thell Reed, also an armorer.

She also was serving as key props assistant for Rust, Gutierrez-Reed tells Hancock, and it had been a challenge to perform both jobs.

Sometimes she was pulled in two different directions, Gutierrez-Reed says, and found herself pouring drinks for a bar scene or rolling cowboy cigarettes.

"There was a couple of times when I also kind of held my ground on not spreading myself too incredibly thin," she says. "Because you kind of just have to, but ultimately, with higher positions, sometimes you get ran over."

Presiding Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer adjourned for the day in the middle of the second, hourslong video of Gutierrez-Reed's interview with the detective and told jurors they'll resume watching it when the trial continues Wednesday morning.