Key Points
- Hannah Gutierrez, armourer for the film Rust, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
- It comes after the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins who was shot when actor Alec Baldwin was handling a gun.
- Baldwin's trial is set for July after a grand jury indicted him on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in January.
The armourer who loaded the gun that killed a cinematographer on the set of the Alec Baldwin movie Rust was sentenced to 18 months in prison by a US court on Monday.
Hannah Gutierrez stood impassive as a judge in New Mexico told her she was not remorseful for the October 2021 death of Halyna Hutchins during filming of the budget Western.
"You were the armourer, the one that stood between a safe weapon and a weapon that could kill someone. You alone turned a safe weapon into a lethal weapon," Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said.
"But for you, Miss Hutchins would be alive. A husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother."
Gutierrez's 10-day trial for involuntary manslaughter had heard how despite being the person charged with handling on-set firearms, the 26-year-old had repeatedly failed to follow basic safety rules, leaving guns unattended and allowing actors -- including Baldwin -- to wave weapons around.
It also heard how she was responsible for the presence of six live rounds — a movie industry red line — and how she had loaded one of them into the Colt .45 gun that Baldwin was using.
The weapon discharged as the actor was preparing a scene inside a wooden church, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
"Halyna Hutchins died due to a cascade of safety violations that began with Miss Gutierrez introducing live rounds to the movie set, loading one into a prop gun telling the members of the crew that it was a cold gun," prosecutor Kari Morrissey told the sentencing hearing in Santa Fe.
"That conduct absent responsibility or remorse is deserving of a sentence of 18 months."
