‘Rust’ armourer jailed for 18 months after shooting on set

Weapons armourer Hannah GutierrezReed has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after loading a gun for US actor Alec Baldwin, which fired and killed a cinematographer on the set of western film Rust.

Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter following the shooting of 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins in October 2021, at a ranch on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer of the film, was pointing a gun at Ms Hutchins during a rehearsal when the weapon went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

The actor pleaded not guilty after he was re-charged with involuntary manslaughter in January this year, before lawyers filed to dismiss the charge – a motion of which is yet to be decided.

He is currently scheduled to face a trial in July.

A jury convicted Gutierrez-Reed in March following a two-week trial, and yesterday she was sentenced to the maximum 18 months.

“The word ‘remorse’, a deep regret coming from a sense of guilt for past wrongs – that is not you,” Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said in her sentencing remarks.

“I find that what you did constitutes a serious violent offence, it was committed in a physically violent manner. A fatal gunshot done with your recklessness in the face of knowledge that your acts were reasonably likely to result in serious harm.

“You were the armourer, 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 sentence hearing came two weeks after the judge denied Gutierrez-Reed’s emergency request for a new trial and release from custody, where she was taken after the guilty verdict.