Mar. 5—Lorenzo Montoya, a compliance officer with the New Mexico Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, took the stand Tuesday as the defense's first witness in the involuntary manslaughter trial for former Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.
Montoya told jurors the agency fined Rust Movie Productions $100,000 after investigating the Oct. 21, 2021, shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a film set near Santa Fe.
Gutierrez-Reed, tasked with overseeing firearms and ammunition for Rust, is accused of bringing live bullets onto the set, one of which was fired from actor Alec Baldwin's revolver and killed Hutchins.
But Montoya's testimony indicated several film crew members played a role in the events leading to Hutchins' death.
The state's workplace safety bureau found "the management team" was responsible for a series of errors "that in our opinion resulted in an accident," Montoya said.
The management team implicated in the agency's report began "at the lowest level" with prop master Sarah Zachry and included line producer Gabrielle Pickle and assistant director David Halls, he said.
The production company agreed to pay the fine — which Montoya said is higher than those the bureau typically levies — as part of a settlement.
"We came to the conclusion [Gutierrez-Reed] was not afforded time to conduct her duties to the best of her diligence," Montoya added.
The production had hired her to perform multiple safety functions for the production and then told her she was spending too much time on those tasks and directed her to do "other duties," he said.
Montoya said the agency also concluded the armorer had no authority to make any training decisions, in violation of safety protocols, and when she raised concerns about not being provided adequate time to perform her armorer duties, "those statements went unheard" by Pickles and possibly Zachry and Halls.
Defense attorneys also called their own investigator to the stand Tuesday.
Scott Elliott, a retired Albuquerque police officer who researched the case for the defense, told jurors an investigation into the shooting by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office was "probably not what it should be."
Among the faults he found with the investigation: Witnesses were not immediately segregated from one another when deputies arrived at the scene.
Allowing witnesses to speak to one another can provide them with an opportunity to "get their stories straight," he said, or to influence each other's recounting of events to the extent they may later "misremember what they saw" when interviewed by police.