Actor Alec Baldwin (Reuters)

Yesterday, Wednesday, an American court convicted the weapons officer on the set of the movie “Rust,” which in 2021 witnessed the killing of a female photographer by an accidental bullet fired by actor Alec Baldwin, of manslaughter.

Prosecutors accused Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the weapons officer on the set of the low-budget film, of repeated negligence.

She faces a prison sentence of up to 18 months.

The verdict will not be pronounced until next month.

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Filming of the Western film “Rust” on a farm in the US state of New Mexico witnessed a tragedy on October 21, 2021, when Baldwin used a weapon that supposedly contained caliber bullets, but live ammunition fired from the weapon caused the death of photographer Halina Hutchins (42 years old) and the injury of director Joel. Souza.

Over the course of two weeks, the trial attempted to determine how a live ammunition, one of many collected by investigators, ended up in a gun on the set, in violation of safety rules standardized across the entire film industry.

During the hearings, jury members were shown photographs showing Alec Baldwin using weapons in a dangerous manner, and pointing them at other members of the team, without the intervention of the weapons officer.

“This is not a case in which a mistake was made by mistakenly placing a live bullet in this weapon,” Prosecutor Carrie Morrissey said during her closing arguments on Wednesday. “Rather, it is a case of continuing safety failures that led to the death of one person and nearly killed another.”

#BREAKING: Alec Baldwin has been formally charged with involuntary manslaughter.

https://t.co/09JZ97eob4

— Court TV (@CourtTV) January 31, 2023

Many failures

The Public Prosecutor found that Hannah Gutierrez Reed showed negligence on the morning of the incident, as she was absent when Baldwin was preparing to film the scene, and left the approximately 20 weapons that the production team was using unattended.

She confirmed that she “left the weapon in the church” where the tragedy occurred, “in violation of all the standards that regulate the work of weapons officials on filming sites,” adding, “As a large number of witnesses reported, she left the weapons unattended the entire time. October 21 did not witness Last October was anything unusual.”

Morrissey, the weapons officer, was accused of bringing live ammunition to the filming location and not conducting the necessary oversight to ensure that the ammunition inserted into the weapon was safe, as empty bullets produce a sound that can be easily identified when the weapon is shaken.

She continued, "If you do not verify that the ammunition is not live, every time an actor carries a weapon it will be like a game of Russian roulette."

The emergency entrance to Christus St. Vincent Medical Center where Souza was injured and director of photography Halina Hutchins was killed during the filming of “Rust” (French)

Scapegoat

The prosecution accused Hannah Gutierrez Reed of concealing an amount of cocaine that she had taken outside her work hours after the tragic incident.

On this point, the jury found her not guilty.

One of her attorneys, Jason Bowles, said Gutierrez-Reed served as a scapegoat for a production team that neglected safety for financial reasons, making her the "appropriate culprit."

The young woman had no way of knowing that live ammunition had been brought onto the set, and she thought the production team had only brought empty bullets, according to the lawyer.

He said, "The responsibility lies with the production (team), as is the case in any organization. We start from the top."

He denounced the producers' rush to report it the day after the tragic accident.

He added, "What the producers want is to continue working to finish the film and make money."

Filming of “Rust” officially resumed last March in Montana, with Halina Hutchins’ widower, Matthew, assuming the duties of executive producer.

At the end of 2022, he abandoned the civil proceedings he filed against Baldwin following an agreement whose value was not disclosed.

At the time, Matthew Hutchins attributed his wife's death to a "terrible accident."

Source: French