A movie weapons supervisor is facing up to 18 months in prison for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film “Rust,” with her sentencing scheduled for Monday in a New Mexico state court.
Movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was convicted in March by a jury on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and has been held for more than a month at a county jail on the outskirts of Santa Fe.
Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer for “Rust,” was pointing a gun at Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
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Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” where it was expressly prohibited and for failing to follow basic gun safety protocols. After a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for about three hours in reaching its verdict.
Oh, which one? Because there were six.
Funnily enough, the DA decided that Baldwin wasn’t actually doing anything as one of them, which I don’t think should be a surprise to people familiar with the idea of celebrity producers.
If you are given a loaded gun on a movie set and told it’s safe by the person in charge of gun safety, you can’t be blamed when it goes off.
Maybe he is as fault for cutting costs but that’s not at all what he was being charged with.
They were filming in a state that has a law specifying the exact opposite. “I thought the gun wasn’t loaded” is codified as not being an excuse for a negligent shooting and there isn’t a “it was a movie set” carve out to the law. Hollywood also seems to be extremely split on this with some actors saying you always check and take personal responsibility and others saying to just trust what you are told. If anything hopefully this will lead to actual best practices being adopted industry wide because the current hodgepodge isn’t cutting it.
Nah, one of the very first things you are taught about gun safety is to always assume a gun is loaded until you have checked it for yourself. If someone hands you a gun, you should always check it no matter what. I’ve been in to firearms since I was 8 years old, and I’ve never had a negligent discharge.
As someone that has been working around weapons for the better part of 20 years, I disagree with your statement of not being blamed.
It’s unfortunate yes, but whoever had that weapon in their hands and pulled the trigger should hold some blame.
If anyone ever hands you a weapon, movie set or not, it should be checked.
I do understand that it doesn’t quite work that way but that’s how it should be. Anyone handling a real weapon, especially during the course of ones job, should be required to go through training.
Proper gun safety is to always check yourself.l, especially since they had live ammo on the set. These are tools that kill people, you can never be too safe and he should have checked the mag before they shot.
At that point all gun safety is already thrown out of the window
A movie set is not supposed to have a single round of live ammo.
Also you can’t compare actors to other people holding guns for the reason above.