Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armourer and weapons supervisor on the set of the Alec Baldwin film Rust, has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering charges.

Her plea comes ahead of a jury trial on 6 December looking into the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

Ms Hutchins was killed, aged 42, after a gun Mr Baldwin had been rehearsing with went off on set in 2021.

Prosecutors say Ms Gutierrez-Reed acted recklessly when loading the gun.

They said she failed to ensure that dummy bullets were loaded into the weapon that killed Ms Hutchins, and that the armourer handed the gun to Baldwin, having not checked that all the bullets were dummies.

Ms Gutierrez-Reed denies this.

In June, prosecutors alleged she was likely to have been hungover on the day of the fatal shooting, accusing her of drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana in the evenings during filming.

In response, her lawyer said prosecutors had mishandled the case and resorted to “character assassination”.

Ms Gutierrez-Reed submitted her not guilty plea on Wednesday, waiving her right to an arraignment and preliminary hearing which would have decided if there was cause for the case to go to trial.

Judge Mary Sommer last week declined to dismiss the case, rejecting arguments from Ms Gutierrez-Reed’s team that prosecutors had tainted the investigation so a fair trial – set to run 6-15 December – was no longer possible and that her due process rights had been violated.

Baldwin, the star and producer of the western, was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter over the incident, but the charges were dropped in April. Filming resumed later that month.

He can still be charged, however, with prosecutors investigating whether the revolver he was holding was modified to fire without a pull of the trigger.