Assistant director says he didn't hand gun to Baldwin

Feb. 29—Former Rust production assistant director David Halls said on the witness stand Thursday he wasn't the person who had handed a revolver to actor Alec Baldwin before it fired a fatal shot.

Armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed gave the gun to Baldwin, he said.

"I was negligent in checking the gun properly," Halls told a Santa Fe County jury at state District Court, offering an explanation of why he agreed to a plea deal last year on a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon in the October 2021 shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Halls' testimony Thursday contradicts statements Baldwin, the film's star and producer, and Gutierrez-Reed had provided to authorities after the shooting. Both said Halls had handed Baldwin the revolver, calling out "cold gun" to indicate it was safe.

Halls said he agreed to testify in a trial for Gutierrez-Reed, who is charged with felony counts of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence, "because it's important to me that the truth be known" — that Hutchins' family, the film's cast and crew, and the industry "know what happened ... so that it never happens again."

Baldwin also faces a count of involuntary manslaughter and is expected to stand trial in July.

Halls said he performed a safety check of the gun with Gutierrez-Reed before she handed it to Baldwin during a rehearsal in a church building at Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.

But, he added, "I don't recall her fully rotating the cylinder," and he saw only "three or four" of the rounds in the chamber, not six.

Halls said he did not instruct Gutierrez-Reed to load dummy rounds into the gun.

He knew the dummy rounds would have "very distinctive, bright brass ends" to them, he said.

When he checked the revolver after Hutchins was shot, Halls said, he checked the full chamber.

"I recall seeing five dummy rounds with the distinctive brass ends to them and one shell casing, with a distinctive looking end to it," he told the court. "I recall that it was gray — metallic gray ... a more contemporary-looking bullet than what I was seeing in the other rounds."

Halls grew emotional during his testimony as he recounted the shooting. He said he was standing three feet from Hutchins when she was struck by a live round.

After she was shot, Hutchins said to him, "I can't feel my legs," Halls said.

The film's prop master, Sarah Zachry, also took the stand Thursday, testifying she and Gutierrez-Reed both performed duties tied to props and firearms on the set. She had helped to load dummy rounds into guns alongside Gutierrez-Reed shortly before Hutchins was shot with a live round, she said.

Gutierrez-Reed had loaded Baldwin's gun with what they believed were dummies, Zachry said, adding she pulled rounds from a cupholder on a cart they were using for firearms. She didn't know where Gutierrez-Reed's rounds came from, she said.

She shook each round next to her ear, Zachry said, to make sure it rattled, as dummy rounds do, and "they all rattled."

Zachry said she was outside the church building when she heard the gunshot and immediately heard a scream from Joel Souza, the director, who was wounded by the bullet that killed Hutchins.

"It was louder than a blank," she said.

Zachry said Gutierrez-Reed was "having a breakdown" after the shooting, holding rounds from Baldwin's gun and saying, "I could swear I shook them."

Prosecutors have argued Gutierrez-Reed introduced live rounds onto the set by bringing in a box of what she believed were dummies but also contained several live rounds. In an interview played for jurors Wednesday, Gutierrez-Reed told an investigator she had loaded Baldwin's gun using a box of ammunition she may have never seen before.

Other testimony and evidence presented Thursday pointed to larger safety concerns on the set of the Western film.

Jurors watched a behind-the-scenes video showing Baldwin speaking hurriedly to crew members after filming a high-energy take in which he left a building and fired several blank rounds toward the camera.

"Right away, right away, just reload it!" Baldwin said in the video.

Halls said he wouldn't characterize the video as Baldwin "rushing people," but rather "an actor in his moment."

Brian Carpenter, an expert in firearms safety on film sets, testified he saw safety problems in the video.

"This is creating an unsafe, nerve-wracking situation," Carpenter said of Baldwin's conduct. "Rushing with firearms or telling someone to rush with firearms is not normal nor accepted."

Prosecutors hired Carpenter — a former law enforcement officer and gun safety instructor — as an expert witness in the case against Gutierrez-Reed. He spoke with a Louisiana drawl, telling the court he had worked as an armorer on the sets of about 100 films.

The armorer is in charge of handling all firearms on a set, and "first and foremost is the armorer's responsibility to ensure the safety of the cast and crew," he said.

Other clips of behind-the-scenes footage of the Rust set played for the jury showed actors and Gutierrez-Reed handling firearms in a way Carpenter said violated a primary safety rule: "Never let the muzzle of a gun point at something you're not willing to harm."

Carpenter observed several instances of a lack of what he called "muzzle discipline" in the videos.

In several clips, an actor holds a double-barrel shotgun between filming takes, pointing the muzzle at various other actors and crew members and at one point handing it to a young actor who appears to be a child.

"He's just toying with the weapon at this point," Carpenter said of the actor.

A typical armorer would collect all live guns from actors in between filming takes, Carpenter said.

He pointed out Gutierrez-Reed was at one point holding a shotgun with the barrel pointed "toward her neck and face" and Baldwin was using a handgun "as a pointing stick, instead of using his finger."

That safety issues existed on the Rust set is not in dispute among prosecutors and defense attorneys, but Gutierrez-Reed's attorneys argue the blame lies largely with the producers, including Baldwin, for hiring Gutierrez-Reed — who was then 24 and had little experience — as a part-time armorer with other part-time prop duties.

Upon cross-examination by defense attorney Jason Bowles, Carpenter acknowledged it would be "very fair" to say Rust — with its many gunfight scenes — should have hired two armorers.

Gutierrez-Reed had testified at a previous hearing tied to citations from the state Occupation Health and Safety Bureau she'd had a conversation with two producers in which she requested more work time dedicated solely to her armorer responsibilities. Both producers — Ryan Winterstern and Nathan Klinger — took the stand Thursday and said they had "no recollection" of such a discussion with Gutierrez-Reed.

Defense attorneys then questioned the producers about their knowledge of safety issues that had led to some crew members quitting — including two "negligent discharges" of firearms — and suggested the production was a "tax shelter" taking advantage of New Mexico's generous tax breaks.

Several crew members have testified during the trial they had never worked on a movie set with an armorer as lax as Gutierrez-Reed when it came to custody of guns and ammunition and leaving them unattended on the set.

Her trial, which began last week, will continue Friday.