‘Rust’ Gunmaker Tells Court That Alec Baldwin Had To Pull Trigger To Fatally Shoot Cinematographer

“No.”

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That’s what the man who made the Colt .45 replica that Alec Baldwin was holding that killed Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021 said Thursday of the possibility the gun could fire without someone pulling the trigger.

“It will only fire when you cock the hammer, the trigger will engage the firing position,” Alessandro Pietta from Pietta Firearms in Italy said in testimony at Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial in New Mexico.

“If you want to release the hammer, you need to pull the trigger,” the understated Pietta added. “The trigger is just a sear that lock the armor in that position. And if you want to do that you need to pull the trigger.”

Facing up to 18 months in a state prison if found guilty, Baldwin has always insisted that while he cocked the hammer, he did not pull the trigger and the gun somehow went off on its own. Although the firearm is now somewhat beat up after various sets of tests over the years, the FBI and independent forensic investigators say there is no way the gun could have fired without the trigger being pulled – exactly what Pietta said today in his short but potentially pivotal testimony in Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer’s courtroom.

Hutchins was fatally shot, and Rust director Joel Souza was injured on October 21, 2021 after the Colt .45 Baldwin was pointing at the director of photography fired off a live round during a rehearsal at the Bonanza Creek Ranch near Santa Fe.

Baldwin’s trial began Tuesday and is set to run until July 19 before the jury go behind closed doors to deliberate. Often sitting with his arms crossed over his chest, Baldwin, who has pleaded not guilty, was in court today. Whether or not he will testify is still up in the air, though defendants in cases like this rarely do testify in their own defense.

Defense lawyer Luke Nikas jumped up to press Pietta that before today, the witness had not actually seen the gun since early 2018, when it was shipped to the U.S. With the exception of a photo on “a Zoom meeting” since the shooting and handling it on the stand Thursday, Pietta agreed with the attorney.

The gunmaker’s testimony ended soon afterwards.

Before Pietta’s testimony, today’s court session mainly centered on law enforcement’s role in the aftermath of the Rust shooting.

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Another part of Thursday was taken up with a mini-hearing as Sommer went over an interview Baldwin did with police soon after the shooting and the redactions the defense decided they wanted at the “last minute,” as the judge termed it. A lot of the interview was a somewhat surly Baldwin talking about guns and his knowledge of firearms over his long career.

At one point, Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey read out Baldwin telling police, “I’m 63 years old with six kids, I can’t rely on luck anymore.” At another juncture, after Morrissey bluntly said Baldwin was lying about not pulling the trigger, the actor suddenly stalked out of the courtroom, to the shock of even the 30 Rock actor’s own attorneys.

In the end, with Sommer clearly irritated that the jury was being forced to wait for the trial proper to start up, about half of the defense’s redactions, mainly the ones on Baldwin’s personal life, were permitted – though remarks about his wife coming to visit him in New Mexico were allowed.

Under questioning from both the prosecution and the often-combative defense, Santa Fe County Sherriff’s Department crime scene technician Marissa Poppell outlined her part in the investigation of the tragedy at the Bonanza Creek Ranch almost three years ago, revolving around the examination of ammunition found in and around the Rust scene and the taking into evidence of the 1880s gun that killed Hutchins.

Essentially accusing Poppell of suppressing evidence, defense lawyer Alex Spiro took the day down a strange path when he started talking about a “good Samaritan” who had come into the sheriff’s office in recent weeks. The individual claimed to have proof of where the live rounds that killed Hutchins came from.

It was quickly revealed by Morrissey that the Samaritan in question was Troy Teske, a good friend of now-incarcerated Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed’s father, Thell Reed. It was also revealed that the bullets the ex-Arizona cop provided didn’t match the one that came out of the gun that was in Baldwin’s hand that terrible day.

The elder Reed is a legendary movie gunman, renowned for his work on Westerns in particular. He was in Judge Sommer’s courtroom for almost every day of his daughter’s trial this spring.

Sentenced on April 15 to 18 months in a New Mexico state prison after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the live round that ended up on the often chaotic Rust set, Gutierrez-Reed is expected to be called as a witness by the state on Friday in Baldwin’s trial.

What she says may be a whole other kettle of fish. In interviews before Baldwin’s trial began, Gutierrez-Reed invoked her Fifth Amendment rights under questioning from prosecutors. Her lawyer Jason Bowles says she intends to do the same tomorrow.

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