“Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed has been accused of transferring narcotics the day that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot by actor Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film.

 

The new charge against the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, “relates to the transfer of narcotics to another person” on Oct. 21, 2021, the day of the shooting, “with the intent to prevent criminal prosecution,” the prosecutor, Kari T. Morrissey, said in a statement.

 

The court filing does not state what kind of narcotic that the armorer allegedly had in her possession, but the case against her is building by the day.

 

The additional charge was announced as tensions between prosecutors and the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office over the case began to spill into public view. An investigator who was removed from the case after working on it for months for the district attorney’s office sharply criticized the sheriff’s office earlier this week in an email to prosecutors.

 

A lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed said that she intended to plead not guilty to both the evidence tampering and the involuntary manslaughter charges.

 

 

Jason Bowles, Ms Gutierrez-Reed’s lawyer, called the new charge “retaliatory and vindictive”. Mr Bowles said the new charge followed the prosecution’s move to fire its lead investigator Robert Shilling after Mr Shilling raised serious concerns about the investigation into Ms Hutchins’s death in an email Mr Bowles provided in a court filing.

 

The case has faced numerous complications since a gun that the actor Alec Baldwin was practicing with on the set of “Rust” went off in 2021, killing the film’s cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, and wounding its director, Joel Souza.

 

The original prosecution team initially charged Mr. Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter. But that charge was later dropped after a new team reviewed evidence suggesting that the gun he was practicing with had been modified.

 

The special prosecutor who initially helped lead the case had stepped down after her appointment was challenged on legal grounds, and the district attorney in charge of the case, Mary Carmack-Altwies, then stepped back and appointed Ms. Morrissey and Jason Lewis as new special prosecutors.