Rust weapons supervisor found guilty over fatal shooting on Alec Baldwin film set
The Rust weapons supervisor has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter following the fatal shooting of the film’s cinematographer on set.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was found not guilty of evidence tampering.
Gutierrez-Reed, 26, was in charge of weapons during production of the Western film in New Mexico in October 2021, when a gun fired by star and co-producer Alec Baldwin went off during a rehearsal.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died following the incident, while director Joel Souza was injured.
Halyna Hutchins, pictured in 2017
Involuntary manslaughter means causing someone’s death due to negligence, without intending to.
Jurors sitting on Gutierrez-Reed’s trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, reached their verdict after hearing evidence in the 10-day trial from dozens of witnesses, including eyewitnesses, FBI evidence analysts and an ammunition supplier to Rust, as well as Mr Souza.
The filmmaker said the noise of the shooting was “deafening” and “felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my shoulder”.
During the trial, jurors were shown footage of Baldwin waving a gun before the fatal shooting.
What is happening with Baldwin’s case?
Gutierrez and Baldwin (below) pictured on set in the aftermath of the shooting. Pics: Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office/AP
Baldwin was originally charged in January 2023, more than a year after the shooting.
Those charges were dropped a few months later based on evidence the hammer of the revolver might have been modified, allowing it to fire without the trigger being pulled.
The star was then charged again in January this year, and earlier this month pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter. He faces his trial in July.
Baldwin has said he pulled back the gun’s hammer – but not the trigger – and the weapon fired.
The revolver that actor Alec Baldwin was holding on the set of Rust was shown during the trial. Pic: Eddie Moore/The Albuquerque Journal/AP
Filming of Rust resumed last year in Montana – with Baldwin reprising his role as the main character – after an agreement made Ms Hutchins’ widower an executive producer.
Gutierrez-Reed’s defence lawyer Jason Bowles said his client was being used as a “scapegoat” during the trial.
He said: “We’re here because of a tragedy, there’s no doubt, there was a tragic occurrence on that movie.
“But let me tell you something you already know: just because there was a tragedy, it does not mean that a crime was committed.”
Assistant director ‘was negligent checking the gun’
David Halls was the assistant director for Rust. Pic: Gabriela Campos/Santa Fe New Mexican/AP
Assistant director David Halls, who last year entered a plea bargain for negligent use of a deadly weapon, receiving a six-month suspended sentence, gave evidence during Gutierrez-Reed’s trial.
He was emotional at times as he told the trial: “I was negligent checking the gun properly.”
Halls told the court how Gutierrez-Reed showed him the rounds in the reproduction Colt 45 revolver and that he recalled “seeing three to four what I believed to be dummy rounds”, which looked “very distinctive” and different from live rounds.
However, he said he did not remember Gutierrez-Reed “fully rotating” the gun cylinder to show him all six rounds.
Asked if he let the safety check pass, he said: “I did.”
Gutierrez-Reed then gave Baldwin the gun, he told the court.
His testimony also included an account of standing about a metre from Ms Hutchins when the single gunshot rang out. As she was on the ground, he asked if she was all right.
“She said, ‘I can’t feel my legs’,” he said.
Halls said he struggled to understand how a live round could have been fired. “The idea that it was a live round of ammunition that went off… it wasn’t computing,” he said.
A man who tried to shoot a pastor during his service at a church was wrestled to the floor after his gun failed to fire, according to police.
Bernard J. Polite, 26, said “God made me do it” and planned to “wait to be arrested”, court documents reveal, when he entered the Pennsylvania church just after 1pm on Sunday.
Glenn Germany, who was giving a sermon being live streamed from Jesus’ Dwelling Place Church, told WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh that Polite smiled at him just before he pointed the gun.
He ducked out of the way as someone from the congregation tackled Polite, before he helped to wrest the gun away and keep him down until officers arrived.
“I am feeling grateful that I woke up this morning and that I am here, it could have gone an opposite direction,” Mr Germany said on Monday.
“But God has intervened and I am grateful for him.”
Polite was not known at the church, officials said, and court filings say he wandered over to the church after hearing music coming from there.
Read more:
9/11 victim’s DNA helps police identify body in 2003 cold case
Driver dies after crashing into White House gate
The body of a shooting victim was found in a home near the church in North Braddock, where Polite had been shortly before going to the church, county police said.
The county medical examiner’s office identified the body as Derek Polite, 56, of North Braddock, but did not confirm any specific relation to Bernard Polite.
Polite faces numerous charges, including aggravated assault and attempted homicide, and is in custody without bail.
State police said they don’t know if Polite has a lawyer, and county court records do not list one.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
In a Facebook post on Monday, the church said Pastor Glenn is “doing fine” and “he says he is doing great and blessed to be alive”.
“He sends his love to everyone and he thanks you all for your prayers and concerns,” it adds.
It could be a scene from centuries ago. In the Nevada desert, Native Americans are protesting over a mining project they say desecrates sacred land.
They are riding to Sentinel Mountain, which their ancestors once used as a lookout in times gone by. Here, they say, more than 30 of their people were massacred by US cavalry in 1865.
Today, the land is at the heart of America’s electric car revolution and Joe Biden’s clean energy policy
Native American tribal members say the mine neglects their interests and offends their history.
The route of the “Prayer Horse Ride”, a journey on horseback through mining-affected communities in Northern Nevada, is designed to publicise their objections.
“Being the original inhabitants of the land means we have cultural ties and roots to these landscapes,” says Gary McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone Paiute tribe.
“To me, it’s sacred ground,” says Myron Smart. His grandmother survived the massacre of 1865 as a baby. Industrialising this place, he says, offends her memory and reflects the story of Native Americans through time.
“We’re people too. We have red blood just like everybody in the United States.”
Myron Smart says the land is sacred ground
Myron Smart’s grandmother, who survived the 1865 massacre
However, a US judge has rejected their complaints and the project is going ahead.
The open mine, which is on public land, will source lithium to power up to a million electric vehicles a year and will create 1,800 jobs in its construction phase.
President Biden aims to make the United States a world leader in electric vehicle technology and reduce reliance for lithium supply on countries like China.
The Thacker Pass project has supporters as well as opponents.
Lithium Americas, the company behind the project, insists the mine is not located on a massacre site. This was supported by a judge in 2021 who ruled the evidence presented by tribes “does not definitely establish that a massacre occurred” within the proposed project area.
Tim Crowley, the company’s VP of Government and External Affairs, said in a statement to Sky News: “Lithium Americas is committed to doing this project right, which is why we have a community benefits agreement in place with the local Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe that ensures benefits from Thacker Pass accrue to them.
“Concerns about cultural and environmental resources were thoroughly addressed in the BLM’s (Bureau of Land Management) approved Environmental Impact Statement, which withstood comprehensive reviews by the Federal District and Circuit Courts.”
However, members of different Nevada-based Native American tribes continue to oppose the mining project. They say their evidence of the 1865 massacre, and a separate inter-tribal conflict, is rooted in the oral history passed on from their ancestors, through generations – not collated with a court case in mind, but compelling nonetheless.
“Back in our ancestors’ days, they didn’t write any documentation down, they didn’t send letters, they didn’t write in journals,” says Gary. “So there was no way that the United States government could know our story.
“These stories have been passed down generation to generation, so we have direct lineage from survivors of these massacres, which is how these stories remain in our families.”
The courts have also rejected complaints by tribal members and conservationists on the environmental impact and planning consultation.
The project throws a focus onto the issues surrounding the pursuit of clean energy.
“First off, we have to acknowledge that we need electric vehicles,” says Amanda Hurowitz of Mighty Earth, a global environmental non-governmental organisation.
They are more efficient than petrol and diesel cars, she says, and they are needed for the US to hit its climate targets.
But they also need more mined minerals – like lithium – and getting those materials out of the ground has an impact.
“All mining operations need to get consent from the local people,” she adds, “and the more consent, the better.”
Authorities in California have been mocked over a “billion-dollar” bridge to nowhere.
The state government of California has long planned for a Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail project.
Despite initial funding being approved back in 2008, the line is still a long way off and expected to cost over $100bn in total.
So far, construction has only begun on the earliest phase and further funding has been used on environmental planning ahead in the Phase I System.
However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority recently publicised one of the completed sections of construction – finished back in 2018 and reported to cost $1bn on its own.
This is a 0.3-mile stretch of bridge, called The Fresno River Viaduct in Madera County, and it has attracted ridicule for going from nowhere to nowhere.
Read more from Sky News:
Trump: ‘Real men wear diapers’
Spacey denies new claims of inappropriate behaviour
Man charged over 1966 murder after DNA breakthrough
Pictures shared by the authority of the bridge show it connected to nothing at either end with some claiming it is indicative of the wider project.
It runs above a road and close to a number of houses – parallel to another rail track – but currently serves no purpose.
Elon Musk poked fun at the recent X post of the construction, with the billionaire posting a crying emoji in response to news of the project.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Others waded in as well on social media.
However, a number of those criticising it made false claims of the viaduct, its cost and time it took to complete it.
Since it was finished six years ago, after three years of construction, dozens more structures have been completed and there are over a hundred miles in active construction across the project.
Due to the vast scale of high-speed rails, they are often complex, expensive and lengthy projects – with the California High Speed Rail being no different.
The rail would come into use some time in the early 2030s but scrapping it reportedly remains a possibility.
California High Speed Rail has been approached for comment.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Environment12 months agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports6 months agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Sports1 month agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Environment1 year agoTesla advances Powerwall pilot project with German electric company