MA v. Kelsey Fitzsimmons

Kelsey Fitzsimmons was a North Andover, Massachusetts police officer and a new mother diagnosed with postpartum depression. On June 30, 2025, three of her own colleagues came to her home to serve a restraining order her fiance had taken out, an order that handed him temporary custody of their infant son and required her to surrender her firearms. She packed a bag for the baby, handed her son to an officer, and walked into her bedroom. Earlier that year she had disclosed a postpartum mental health crisis, voluntarily surrendered her firearms, completed treatment, and been cleared to return to full duty just weeks before.

What happened next had no camera on it. Officer Patrick Noonan, a 20-year veteran she considered a close friend, said Fitzsimmons retrieved her service weapon, pointed it at him, pulled the trigger, and tried to reload when it did not fire; he shot her once in the chest. Fitzsimmons said the barrel was never pointed at anyone but herself, that she held it to her own temple in a suicide attempt, and that Noonan shot her anyway. The North Andover department did not use body cameras, so there was no video and no forensic evidence establishing which way the barrel pointed. The Commonwealth charged her with one count of assault with a dangerous weapon, on the theory that she aimed the gun at the officer who shot her. She pleaded not guilty.

The case came down to one account against her own. After a three-day bench trial in March 2026 in Essex Superior Court, Judge Jeffrey Karp found Kelsey Fitzsimmons not guilty. The judge noted that the Commonwealth might have more easily met its burden had the department used body cameras. She had faced up to five years in prison.

The deep dive below, One Witness, No Camera, 100 Days in Jail, was written months before the verdict. Read it, then measure it against how this ended.