Wounded 'Rust' director testifies in armorer's trial

Mar. 1—Film director Joel Souza didn't initially believe it when hospital personnel told him he'd suffered a gunshot wound, he testified Friday morning.

"They kept talking about a bullet," he told jurors at state District Court in Santa Fe during a trial for a film crew member charged in a fatal shooting on the set of the ill-fated Western film Rust. "I kept insisting, 'You don't understand. This is a movie set. It's not possible.' "

He had to accept it, Souza said, when he saw an X-ray showing the "large" bullet lodged in his back.

Souza was rushed to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center after being struck by the same bullet that killed the film's cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, Oct. 21, 2021, during a walk-through for a scene with star and producer Alec Baldwin in a makeshift church at Bonanza Creek Ranch south of Santa Fe.

The bullet entered Hutchins on the right side of her chest, passed through her and lodged in Souza's shoulder.

Baldwin and the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, are both charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with Hutchins' death, which prosecutors have said occurred because the armorer brought live rounds on the set and loaded at least one of them into a revolver that discharged the bullet while Baldwin was holding it.

Gutierrez-Reed's defense attorneys have argued Rust producers set the young armorer up to fail by hiring her to fill two positions — armorer and props assistant — and pushing the crew to work hastily to save money on production costs.

Gutierrez-Reed also is charged with tampering with evidence in connection with an allegation she handed a baggie of cocaine to another crew member after being interviewed by police about the incident.

Baldwin — who has said he didn't pull the trigger on the gun and entered a plea of not guilty to the charge — is scheduled to stand trial in July.

Souza testified on the eighth day of Gutierrez-Reed's trial, which began last week. He described chaotic scenes, both before and after the shooting.

Right before the shooting, he'd been trying to look over Hutchins' shoulder at a camera monitor to see how the scene looked, he said. That's when he heard — and felt — the shot.

"There was an incredibly loud bang," he said. "It was deafening. It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my shoulder. I remember that distinctly. I remember stumbling back."

Crew members lowered him and Hutchins to the ground, he said, but they weren't facing each another.

"I still didn't quite know what had happened," he said. "Nothing made sense. Then I saw the blood on her back."

The bullet struck Hutchins in the armpit region and exited below her shoulder blade, a witness from the state Office of the Medical Investigator told jurors earlier this week.

"I remember a lot of panic," Souza testified. "I still just couldn't figure out what had happened."

His initial thought, he added, was that something might have been stuck in the barrel of the gun and dislodged.

Souza said he'd seen Gutierrez-Reed briefly before he was taken to the hospital.

"I remember looking up and her standing there ... and she looked distraught," he said. "I remember her saying, 'I'm sorry, Joel,' and I remember someone screaming at her and they just ushered her out."

Souza said he didn't remember whether Gutierrez-Reed or assistant director David Halls had handed Baldwin the revolver just before the scene. Halls testified Thursday it was Gutierrez-Reed, not him, who passed the weapon to Baldwin before the shot.

Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin have both said previously Halls was the one who gave Baldwin the weapon, assuring him it was a "cold gun," or safe to handle. Halls, who accepted a plea deal last year on a charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon, said Thursday that was not true, and that Baldwin had changed his story after initially telling authorities he'd accepted the gun from the armorer.

The state's case has focused heavily on Gutierrez-Reed's performance as an armorer on the Rust set. Prosecutors have elicited testimony from several witnesses who said she was notably less organized and more cavalier about the handling of weapons than others they'd worked with in the past.

Rust script supervisor Mamie Mitchell testified Friday the prop cart Gutierrez-Reed had used on the set was so disorganized it resembled a kitchen junk drawer.

"I'd never seen anything like it," she said.

In her 42 years in the film business, Mitchell said, she'd worked on 74 productions, 24 with an armorer, and Gutierrez-Reed was unlike any of them.

"In my experience, armorers are very quite focused and very organized ... methodical," Mitchell said.

Gutierrez-Reed was different.

"I found her to be inexperienced," Mitchell said. "She did not present in the way I'm used to seeing professional armorers, union armorers on a film set."

For example, Mitchell said, she often saw weapons left unattended on the armorer's prop cart.

Mitchell is one of two witnesses who testified Friday — set medic Cherlyn Schaefer is the other — who have filed civil lawsuits against the film's producers seeking damages in connection with the shooting.

Souza told jurors the armorer's performance on the job did not tend to draw his attention before the shooting because he was focused on his own work, but he sent her a message complimenting her after one particularly action-packed day on the set. Thanking crew members after a tough day is something he does often, he said.

Before Souza took the stand Friday, jurors heard the second half of testimony form prop master Sarah Zachry, which had begun Thursday.

Zachry said she threw away rounds she had removed from revolvers used by several actors following the shooting. She panicked at the time, she said, but also had routinely thrown away dummy cartridges during filming.

"They weren't the rounds in question, so I didn't think it mattered," she said under cross examination by defense attorney Jason Bowles.

Zachry, who also assisted with loading and unloading weapons on the set, has a cooperation agreement with the state protecting her from prosecution in exchange for her truthful testimony against Gutierrez-Reed and Baldwin.

She told jurors she had a short phone call after the shooting with Seth Kenney, whose company PDQ Arm & Prop supplied some guns and ammunition for the film. The conversation left her with the impression Kenney was "mortified" by what had happened, she added.

She also talked to Baldwin on the phone several times after the shooting, she said.

"We both didn't know what had happened," Zachry said, so the conversations were "mostly theorizing" about what had gone wrong.

"He would mainly call and ask questions that I didn't have answers to," she said.

Zachry also said she'd texted Kenney after one of her conversations with Baldwin, telling him the actor was having a hard time remembering what happened, "like most of us," but "he thinks Dave handed him the gun."

Gutierrez-Reed's trial was originally scheduled to continue through March 6. However, District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer told jurors Friday it likely will run a day or two over schedule.