Prosecutors in New Mexico said in a court filing Thursday that the armorer who loaded the gun on the set of the film “Rust” before it went off during a rehearsal, killing the cinematographer, transferred a small bag of cocaine to someone after she was interviewed by police on the day of the fatal shooting.
The armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the case. Last week, prosecutors added a new evidence tampering charge, accusing her of passing drugs to another person to avoid criminal prosecution.
The prosecutors, Kari T. Morrissey and Jason J. Lewis, gave new details about the evidence tampering charge in a request to a judge asking that their key witness — the person who says Ms. Gutierrez-Reed handed the cocaine off to them — have their identity protected initially.
The filing referred to the witness only as S1. The filing said that the witness “will testify that the defendant transferred a small bag of cocaine to S1 on the evening of Oct. 21, 2021, after the defendant returned from her interview at the police station on the day of the fatal shooting.”
The witness, who was described as an employee in the film industry, has concerns about being “blacklisted” and pestered by the media if their name is revealed, the filing said. The prosecutors acknowledged that the witness’s identity would have to be revealed eventually.
In a statement on Friday, a lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, Jason Bowles, questioned the sudden introduction of a new witness 20 months after the shooting.
“And the state won’t identify the person?” Mr. Bowles said in the statement. “This is a throwback to the secret, star chamber prosecutions in England in the 15th century that were abolished. Like everything else with the state’s case and investigation, it’s full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.”
Mr. Bowles has said that his client plans to plead not guilty to both charges against her.
The actor Alec Baldwin was rehearsing drawing an old-fashioned revolver from a shoulder holster when the gun, which was not supposed to be loaded with live ammunition, discharged. It fired a live round that killed the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and injured the movie’s director, Joel Souza.
After the shooting, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed sat for an interview with investigators from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, telling them that she had loaded the Long Colt revolver that day with what she believed to have been six dummy rounds, meaning inert cartridges used to appear like real rounds in close-up camera shots.
After that interview, prosecutors allege, Ms. Gutierrez-Reed handed off the bag of cocaine.
“The circumstances of the transfer of evidence strongly support the charge that the defendant transferred the cocaine to avoid prosecution,” the filing said, “and prevent law enforcement from obtaining highly inculpatory evidence directly related to the defendant’s handling of the firearm and the circumstances of the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins.”
Mr. Baldwin had initially been charged with involuntary manslaughter, but prosecutors dismissed the case against him after learning that the gun may have been modified in a way that would have made it easier to discharge.
The conduct of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office was recently criticized by an investigator who was leaving the district attorney’s office. The investigator, Robert Shilling, wrote in a June 20 email to colleagues that “their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for.”
Mr. Shilling, the former chief of the New Mexico State Police, accidentally sent the email to Mr. Bowles, the defense lawyer, as well. Mr. Shilling later declined to elaborate on the email, saying he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement, and the sheriff’s office declined to comment.
A judge is set to determine in August whether the charges again Ms. Gutierrez-Reed can go forward.
