A Massachusetts judge acquitted 29-year-old North Andover police officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons on a single count of assault with a dangerous weapon Thursday, ending a bench trial that turned on two credible but irreconcilable accounts of what happened inside her bedroom when fellow officers arrived to serve a restraining order in June 2025.
Judge Jeffrey Karp said he found the testimony of both Fitzsimmons and the officer who shot her, Officer Patrick Noonan, to be credible. But credible is not the same as proven, and Karp concluded the Commonwealth had not met its burden.
The verdict capped three days of testimony in a case that left a young officer shot twice, jailed for 103 days, separated from her infant son, and forced to sell her home, all before a judge determined the state could not prove she committed a crime. Whatever one makes of the facts, the consequences Fitzsimmons absorbed before trial were enormous. And the questions the case raises about how police departments handle mental-health crises among their own remain unanswered.
The confrontation began in June 2025, when three officers from Fitzsimmons' own department showed up at her house to serve a restraining order obtained by her fiancé, Justin Aylaian. The order removed their infant son from her care and, as the New York Post reported, even took away her dog.
Aylaian took the witness stand and said he sought the order because he feared Fitzsimmons might harm herself or their son. Fitzsimmons, who testified Wednesday, told the judge she had been suffering from severe postpartum depression four months after giving birth.
She described the moment the restraining order was served as the collapse of everything at once, her child, her fiancé, her dog, her house, and, she knew, her career. Fitzsimmons told the court:
"I wanted to be alone with my firearm and take my life. I made that decision when I realized I had just lost everything in a 15-second conversation with my co-worker."
She said she pointed her service weapon at her own head. She did not point it at anyone else.
Officer Noonan told a different story. He testified that Fitzsimmons lunged behind her bedroom door, grabbed something, and aimed the weapon at him. He described hearing a "click" noise and said she "tap racked" the gun twice, a motion used to clear a malfunction. Believing she was trying to kill him or possibly Aylaian downstairs, Noonan said he fired two rounds.
Fitzsimmons was airlifted to Mass General Hospital. She spent more than 50 days recovering and underwent five surgeries.
Judge Karp did not call either witness a liar. That was the core of his dilemma, and, from the bench, he said so plainly:
"What has made my job especially difficult in this case is that, by and large, I found the testimony of Officer Noonan and Ms. Fitzsimmons to be credible on the material and relevant points. In my experience, this is unusual and somewhat perplexing."
Karp then made a pointed observation. He said prosecutors might have been able to "easily" prove the case "if the officers had been wearing body cameras." They were not. And without that footage, the judge was left weighing one officer's word against another's, with no independent record to break the tie.
That gap matters. Body cameras exist precisely for moments like this, contested, high-stakes encounters where lives hang on split-second decisions and the truth is locked inside a room with no neutral observer. The absence of that evidence did not exonerate Fitzsimmons on the merits. It meant the state could not prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Karp delivered the verdict in clear terms:
"But under these circumstances, I'm left with a reasonable doubt and I'm duty-bound to find that the Commonwealth has not met its burden to prove that Ms. Fitzsimmons committed an assault by means of a dangerous weapon on Officer Noonan. And my verdict is and must be not guilty."
Prosecutor James Gubitose did not go quietly. During Thursday morning's closing arguments, he held up Fitzsimmons' empty gun, pointed it toward the front of the courtroom, and pressed the trigger. The gun clicked. He argued that Fitzsimmons lied when she testified she never tap racked the weapon.
Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker backed his team in a statement after the verdict:
"The indictment against Kelsey Fitzsimmons was brought in good faith, supported by credible police testimony, and corroborated by the physical evidence. While respecting the Judge's verdict, we disagree."
The DA's office stands by its prosecution. Fair enough. Prosecutors are entitled to bring charges they believe the evidence supports. But the judge, the one who heard every word of testimony and weighed every piece of physical evidence, found reasonable doubt. That is how the system works, even when the outcome frustrates the state.
Defense attorney Timothy Bradl took a harder line. He called Noonan's account "sloppy" and inconsistent, and mocked it as something out of a "Rambo" movie. Bradl argued Fitzsimmons had no motive to kill a fellow officer and offered a blunt alternative theory of what happened:
"He's the only one with the 'Rambo' story. Everyone else has what Kelsey says. He walks into a suicide in progress, 'Kelsey, no. Kelsey, no.' Bam bam. Brain freeze. He has to cover it up immediately."
That is a defense attorney's argument, not a finding of fact. Judge Karp said he "saw no evidence of conspiracy" by law enforcement involved in the case. He did, however, acknowledge that Fitzsimmons had shown herself to be "a dedicated public servant" who reacted to "sudden, confusing and heartbreaking news."
Outside the courthouse after the verdict, Fitzsimmons spoke to reporters. She did not sound like someone celebrating. She sounded like someone who had been through a grinder and come out the other side with nothing left but a not-guilty verdict.
"I got shot. I went to jail for 103 days. I haven't seen my son. I had to sell my home that I worked very hard for. This is my first breath of fresh air and I feel like I can breathe again."
She said she would fight to get custody of her son back. "I need to reunite with my son," Fitzsimmons told reporters, adding that she thought about him "day after day."
Consider the inventory of what this 29-year-old woman lost before a judge ever ruled: she was shot twice by a colleague, airlifted to a hospital, spent 50-plus days recovering from five surgeries, sat in jail for more than three months, lost custody of her infant, lost her home, and lost her fiancé. All of that happened before the trial even began. The acquittal does not undo any of it.
Judge Karp's remark about body cameras should not be treated as a footnote. It is the most consequential line in the entire ruling for anyone who cares about accountability in policing, on both sides of the badge.
If the North Andover officers responding to a volatile domestic situation involving a fellow officer and a firearm had been wearing body cameras, this case would likely never have gone to trial, or it would have ended in a conviction. Either way, the truth would be on tape. Instead, the state spent resources prosecuting a case it could not prove, a woman spent 103 days in jail for conduct a judge could not confirm, and the public is left to choose between two credible but contradictory accounts with no way to verify either one.
That is not a system working well. That is a system operating blind in a situation where the technology to see clearly has existed for years.
The acquittal resolves the criminal charge. It does not resolve the deeper questions. Fitzsimmons described suffering from severe postpartum depression when her colleagues arrived at her door. She said she wanted to die. Whether her department had any protocols for handling a mental-health crisis involving one of its own armed officers, and whether those protocols were followed, is not addressed in the trial record as reported.
Nor is it clear what, if any, disciplinary or employment consequences Fitzsimmons faces within the North Andover police department now that she has been acquitted. She told reporters she wants her son back. Whether she wants her badge back, or whether it would be offered, remains an open question.
The DA's office says it brought the case in good faith. The judge says reasonable doubt prevented a conviction. The officer who fired says he feared for his life. The officer who was shot says she was trying to end her own. Somewhere in that tangle of competing truths is what actually happened inside that bedroom. Without body-camera footage, no one outside that room will ever know for certain.
An acquittal is not vindication. But 103 days in jail before one is not justice, either.
