Prop Armorer Convicted of Involuntary Manslaughter in ‘Rust’ Shooting

Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the armorer who managed the prop firearms on the set of the western drama Rust, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for loading a live round of ammunition into the weapon held by actor Alec Baldwin, which went off during the production in October 2021 and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The jury in the Santa Fe criminal case found her not guilty of a second charge of evidence tampering. Sentencing will take place at a later date, and she could face 18 months in prison. 

When she was first charged in January 2023, prosecutors also announced that Dave Halls—the assistant director,  a job that typically involves safety checks during filming—had accepted a plea bargain for negligent use of a deadly weapon. Hall, who received  a suspended sentence and six months of probation, had declared the firearm to be a “cold gun” before handing it to Baldwin, according to sheriff’s department reports.

Baldwin was re-charged with involuntary manslaughter in the case this past January, after prosecutors initially dropped the accusation. A grand jury determined there was cause to refile the charge against the actor, who has contended he did nothing wrong in trusting the crew to maintain a safe environment. 

Live ammunition is strictly forbidden on movie sets, given the risk of a mix-up of the sort that led to the Rust tragedy. On Oct. 21, 2021, while rehearsing a scene in a weather-beaten chapel set on a ranch outside of Santa Fe, the gun in Baldwin’s hand went off and struck Hutchins in the chest before the bullet passed through and hit writer-director Joel Souza. Souza survived the injuries; Hutchins died later at a hospital.

From there, sheriff’s investigators tried to determine how a real bullet could have gotten onto the set and into the gun. Ultimately, they identified several live rounds on the set, and the blame fell on multiple shoulders as prosecutors sought to file charges. Numerous civil lawsuits have also arisen over the fatal shooting, and a Vanity Fair investigation (“This Cannot Be Right”: How the Gun in Alec Baldwin’s Hand’s Turned the Rust Set Deadly) identified a litany of breakdowns that led up to the shooting.

Hutchins, who was 42, was the mother of a young son, and after her death, her husband Matt posted an image of their family to social media with the caption: “Halyna inspired us all with her passion and vision, and her legacy is too meaningful to encapsulate in words,” he wrote. “Our loss is enormous.” 

She was born in Ukraine and studied journalism at Kyiv National University, beginning her film career in documentaries. She graduated from the American Film Institute in 2015, and two years later attended the Cannes Film Festival with the thriller Snowbound. In 2019, American Cinematographer magazine singled her out on its annual list of “rising stars.”

Rust was a level-up for the cinematographer, a scrappy, independently made drama starring Baldwin as an aging gunslinger, trying to protect a young boy who was being hunted by the authorities for—in a tragically ironic twist—an accidental shooting.