Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the chief weapons handler for the Western movie Rust, was sentenced to 18 months in prison today for the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was shot when actor Alec Baldwin was handling a gun during the film's production in 2021.
Last month, Gutierrez-Reed, 27, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for mistakenly loading a live round into a revolver Mr Baldwin was using on a New Mexico movie set.
The shooting, which stunned Hollywood, is believed to be the first time in modern times that a member of a film crew or cast was killed by a live round accidentally loaded into a gun.
Mr Baldwin's trial is set for 10 July after a grand jury indicted him on a charge of involuntary manslaughter in January.
Gutierrez-Reed, stepdaughter of Hollywood gun trainer Thell Reed, was sentenced by New Mexico District Court Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer.
In her sentencing remarks, Judge Sommer said: "I find that what you did constitutes a serious violent offence, it was committed in a physically violent manner. A fatal gunshot done with your recklessness in the face of knowledge that your acts were reasonably likely to result in serious harm.
"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.
"But for you, Ms Hutchins would be alive, a husband would have his partner and a little boy would have his mother."
Gutierrez-Reed's lawyer, Jason Bowles, had requested she be given probation, but prosecutors argued for a full 18 months due to lack of contrition.
Prosecutor Kari Morrissey pointed to phone calls by Gutierrez-Reed from jail in which she said the jurors were "idiots", the judge had been "paid off", and she continued to blame Mr Baldwin and others for the shooting.
The court heard several emotional witness statements, including from Ms Hutchins' mother Olga Solovey, father Anatolii Androsovych and sister Svetlana Zemko.
A video interview of Ms Solovey, who lives and works in Kyiv as a nurse caring for those wounded in the Ukrainian war, saw her relive the 3am call she received from Ms Hutchins’ husband Matthew, informing her of the death of her daughter in October 2021.
"The day of her death ruined my entire life…every minute I wait until I’ll meet her again," she said of Ms Hutchins, who was hoping to have her own daughter following the birth of her son Andros.
While her former Marine officer father said it was indescribable to express the "soul-crushing pain that I live through every day".
"The constant state of stress, the turmoil of my soul has drained my physical strength and caused an abrupt decline of my health with continued physical pain in my heart," he said in a statement read to the court.
Rust director Joel Souza also appeared on a video link to read a statement, telling the court: "I want the pain to go away, I want to be who I was before all this happened and above all, I want Halyna to be back home with her husband and son in the house she never got to live in."
"The last two-and-a-half years are difficult to put into words," Souza added.
"What it has done to me and the burden it has placed on me, both emotionally and physically are my private burdens and I think I’ll choose to keep them that way today.
"What I will say is one moment the world made sense, and the next moment it didn’t and it still doesn’t. And I don’t know if it ever will again.
"What I really want I can’t have, I want everyone damaged by Ms Gutierrez-Reed’s failures that day to find peace, I want this whole thing not to have been consumed by the world as some sick form of mass entertainment."
Gutierrez-Reed, who appeared emotional at points during the hearing, took to the stand before her sentencing asking the judge for probation saying "I beg you, please don’t give me more time".
"I am saddened by the way the media sensationalised our traumatic tragedy and portrayed me as a complete monster, which has actually been the total opposite of what has been in my heart," she said.
"When I took on Rust, I was young and I was naive, but I took my job as seriously as I knew how to, despite not having proper time, resources and staffing. When things got tough, I just did my best to handle it.
"…The jury has found me in part at fault for this god awful tragedy, but that doesn’t make me a monster, that makes me human."
Gutierrez-Reed has already spent a month in Santa Fe County Jail following her conviction.
On 6 March, a Santa Fe jury took less than two hours to find her guilty. One juror afterwards said Gutierrez-Reed had not done her job to ensure weapons safety on set.
Ms Hutchins' death initially prompted US film and television productions to stop using real firearms and blank ammunition.
Two-and-a-half years later, many are using them again because of the realistic effects they produce, according to armourers.
Ms Hutchins was fatally shot when Mr Baldwin pointed his gun at the cinematographer and cocked the weapon as she set up a scene.
During Gutierrez-Reed's three-week trial, prosecutors accused her of unknowingly bringing live Colt .45 bullets onto the set of the low-budget movie, something that has been strictly forbidden for nearly a century under Screen Actors Guild safety guidelines.
Mr Bowles said Gutierrez-Reed was the scapegoat for a chaotic production where she was not given time to check weapons.
He blamed Ms Hutchins' death on the reckless use of firearms by Mr Baldwin and his efforts to rush and control the filming. Mr Baldwin was also a producer and writer of the movie.
The actor denies pulling the trigger and said he had been directed to aim it at the camera.
However, the FBI and an independent firearms expert found the gun would not fire without the trigger depressed.
Baldwin was initially charged with involuntary manslaughter in January 2023, but those charges were formally dismissed three months later.
Earlier in January 2024, special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in Santa Fe after receiving a new analysis of the gun, and Baldwin was re-charged.
The indictment accuses Baldwin of involuntary manslaughter through negligent use of a firearm, and an alternative charge of involuntary manslaughter "without due caution or circumspection".
Baldwin previously said he pulled back the hammer, but not the trigger, and the gun fired.
Lawyers for Baldwin asked a judge to dismiss the charge, accusing prosecutors of "violating nearly every rule in the book" in acquiring the indictment, while prosecutors claimed the motion to dismiss was "predictable false, misleading, and histrionic misrepresentation of the facts".
Film historians, such as Alan Rode, said you have to look back to the early part of the last century to find examples of Hollywood cast or crew killed by live rounds accidentally loaded into guns.
Previous on-set fatal shootings of actors Brandon Lee in 1993 and Jon-Erik Hexum in 1984 involved blank rounds.
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