‘Rust’ gunsmith found guilty of involuntary manslaughter

A court of the First Judicial District of Santa Fe on Wednesday found a gunsmith guilty of involuntary manslaughter over an incident during the filming of Hollywood motion picture “Rust,” which killed the project’s photography director in 2021.

The New Mexico court in the United States said Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was also responsible for the security protocol and was acquitted of a charge of tampering with evidence, faces up to 18 months in prison for the death of Halyna Hutchins.

She received a preventive detention order after the verdict reached by the jury following two weeks of testimony. Gutierrez-Reed – the first person to be tried in this case – was considered the main culprit of Hutchins’ death on Oct. 21, 2021 in a shooting in which actor Alec Baldwin, whose judicial process will begin on Jul. 9. The gunsmith loaded the prop gun Baldwin used during the filming, during which Hutchins was killed.

Director Joel Souza was also injured in the incident. The jury mostly agreed Wednesday that Gutierrez-Reed acted negligently by improperly verifying that the 0.45-caliber revolver ammunition used in the filming was fake, so the death of the director of photography was a “foreseeable consequence.