‘Rust’ Armorer Transferred Narcotics on Day of Shooting, Prosecutor Says

The original armorer on the film “Rust,” who was charged with involuntary manslaughter after a gun that was loaded with live ammunition fired on the set and killed the cinematographer, will face an additional charge of evidence tampering related to narcotics, a special prosecutor in the case said Thursday.

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

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.

“The conduct of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office during and after their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for,” the investigator, Robert Shilling, wrote in the email he sent Tuesday. “Not I or 200 more proficient investigators than I can/could clean up the mess delivered to your office in October 2022 (1 year since the initial incident … inexcusable).”

Mr. Shilling declined to elaborate on the email on Thursday, writing that he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. Juan Rios, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, declined to comment on the criticism.

Mr. Shilling, an independent contractor for the district attorney’s office who has reported to Ms. Morrissey in recent months, had made the criticism in a note addressing a decision to take him off the case. The email was provided to The New York Times on Thursday in response to a public records inquiry.

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.

The email from Mr. Shilling, the former chief of the New Mexico State Police, was sent to Ms. Morrissey, Ms. Carmack-Altwies, another member of the district attorney’s office and, improbably, to Jason Bowles, a lawyer for Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. (Mr. Shilling said he had sent the note to Mr. Bowles by mistake because he has the same first name as one of his supervisors. He called his email “unprofessional,” noting that “the victim deserved better.”)

On Thursday, Mr. Bowles said in a statement that the announcement of the additional charge after 20 months of investigation and no prior notice to his client was “shocking.”

“This comes on the heels of the state letting its lead investigator go, and the investigator raising serious concerns about the investigation in an email,” Mr. Bowles said. “This stinks to high heaven.”

Of the narcotics allegation, Mr. Bowles said that he hasn’t seen any facts or witnesses statements backing it.

In her statement, Ms. Morrissey defended the integrity of law enforcement’s investigation, writing, “We disagree with Mr. Shilling’s evaluation that any gaps in the investigation conducted by the Santa Fe County Sheriff could not be cured and we are diligently working with the sheriff’s department and our own investigative team to conduct any necessary follow-up that we, as special prosecutors, deem necessary.”

Amy Ruiz, a member of the clerk’s office at the First Judicial District Court of New Mexico, said Thursday that an amended criminal information document had been filed in the court in relation to Ms. Gutierrez-Reed’s case this morning, but that the court had a backlog in processing filings and the document was not publicly available yet.