'Rust' armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed released from prison early

Jessica Schladebeck, New York Daily News on May 24, 2025

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NEW YORK — “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been released from prison after spending more than a year behind bars for the fatal on-set shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Prison records show Gutierrez-Reed was freed from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility on Friday morning, having served about 13 months of her 18-month sentence.

Sources told TMZ her early release was due to good behavior, specifically her completion of a drug program while behind bars.

Hutchins was attending a rehearsal at New Mexico’s Bonanza Creek Ranch on Oct. 21, 2021, when she was fatally shot by a prop gun handled by leading man Alec Baldwin. He’d been seated in a church pew, practicing a move in which he whips a pistol from its holster, when it suddenly went off.

The 42-year-old cinematographer was pronounced dead a short time later, while director Joel Souza was also injured and transported to Christus St. Vincent’s Regional Medical Center by ambulance. He was later released from the hospital.

In March 2024, Gutierrez-Reed, who’d been tasked with overseeing weapons on the set of the Western flick, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection with Hutchins’ death.

An investigation into the matter determined she was likely hungover when she loaded the prop gun with live ammunition. Prosecutors alleged she’d been drinking heavily and doing drugs in the evenings after production wrapped.

She was acquitted of a second charge of evidence tampering, which stemmed from allegations that she transferred a bag of cocaine to another person after the shooting.

Gutierrez-Reed will remain supervised under terms of probation after pleading guilty to a separate charge of carrying a gun into a Santa Fe bar, where firearms are prohibited, in the weeks before filming began.

Baldwin also faced an involuntary manslaughter charge in connection with Hutchins’ death, but a judge dismissed the case in the middle of trial last summer due to prosecutorial misconduct and evidence suppression.