NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — An off-duty North Andover police officer who was shot during a confrontation with police at her home earlier this summer has been released into the custody of her parents.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, appeared in Essex Superior Court on Thursday after a grand jury indicted her for assault by means of a dangerous weapon on Monday.
During the probable cause hearing, prosecutors argued that Fitzsimmons should be held without bail, while her defense team presented a plan for her mental health treatment.
Fitzsimmons, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, was granted her release to her parents after her attorneys emphasized the importance of addressing her mental health needs to the judge, suggesting that treatment would be more beneficial than incarceration.
Fitzsimmons was initially arraigned in early August from her hospital bed on charges of armed assault with intent to murder and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. She pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Fitzsimmons was shot by police once in the chest in the incident on Phillips Brooks Road around 6 p.m. on June 30, according to Essex County District Attorney Paul Tucker and her attorney.
Three officers were carrying out a court-ordered restraining order at Fitzsimmons’ home when the shooting happened, prosecutors said. Fitzsimmons was the subject of the restraining order.
“When one of the officers was escorting Ms. Fitzsimmons during the service of the court order, an armed confrontation took place,” Tucker said after the shooting. “One of the standard boxes to check is the retrieval of any firearms in the home.”
The order, obtained by Fitzsimmons’ fiancée and the father of their four-month-old baby, came “by surprise” in an “ex parte fashion, seeking to take the child away from her,” her attorney, Tim Bradl, said last month.
“I am in trouble and have a gunshot wound to my chest because in that awful, isolated moment, I no longer had the will to live,” Fitzsimmons said in her first public comment on the incident, adding that she was diagnosed with postpartum depression soon after giving birth to her son in February.
Fitzsimmons is due back in court in October.
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