“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, the maximum penalty she could receive for the involuntary manslaughter charge.
Gutierrez-Reed was sentenced in New Mexico on April 15 after first being convicted of involuntary manslaughter back on March 6 and has been remanded into custody ever since. She was acquitted on a charge of evidence tampering.
In a brief statement before she was sentenced, Gutierrez-Reed told the courtroom, “I beg you please don’t give me more time.”
“The jury has found me in part at fault for this God-awful tragedy but that doesn’t make a monster,” she said. “That makes me human.”
A jury found that Gutierrez-Reed was responsible for the weapons on the film and that she loaded a live round into the gun that was handed to actor Alec Baldwin and discharged, killing Hutchins and injuring the film’s director Joel Souza. The case centered around how a live round made its way to set, and the jury was presented with evidence that Gutierrez-Reed brought a bag of loose rounds with her to set from a prior film she had worked on.
The jury also heard testimony that Gutierrez-Reed was unprofessional on set, that she failed to properly check the rounds before loading them, that she was allegedly hungover and had been using marijuana while on the job, and that she had said in a text message to law enforcement that she initially believed a round pulled from Hutchins was a dummy round. Gutierrez-Reed did not take the stand to testify during the case.
Gutierrez-Reed’s conviction does not close the door on Baldwin also being held responsible for Hutchins’ death on the set of “Rust.” He stands trial on the same involuntary manslaughter charge as Gutierrez-Reed this July, and he too faces up to 18 months in prison.
More to come…
