The trial of Kelsey Fitzsimmons begins this week. Here’s what to know.

Last summer, news broke that an off-duty North Andover police officer had been shot by a colleague in an “armed confrontation” in her home. The officer, Kelsey Fitzsimmons, was being served a restraining order that her then-fiancé had applied for. She was shot in the chest and survived. 

Conflicting accounts of the shooting, allegations of misconduct, and discussion of mental health issues have caused the case to take on a life of its own in the many months since. 

Fitzsimmons stands accused of assault with a dangerous weapon. She has pleaded not guilty, and her trial is set to begin on Monday, March 23.

On Wednesday, Fitzsimmons waived her right to a jury trial. The bench trial will be overseen by Judge Jeffrey Karp in Essex Superior Court. 

What follows is an outline of the major aspects of the case, including the events leading up to the shooting, the contradictory stories about how Fitzsimmons was shot, and the legal developments since. 

Before the shooting 

Fitzsimmons was hired by the North Andover Police Department in the spring of 2024. She previously attended Fisher College and the Massachusetts School of Law. Before joining NAPD, she served as a correctional officer in the Essex County Sheriff’s Department.

She was engaged to Justin Aylaian, a North Andover firefighter. The two had a son in February 2025. 

The “catalyst” for Fitzsimmons’s “mental health complications” was an incident that occurred in the summer of 2024. Alongside NAPD officer Patrick Noonan, Fitzsimmons responded to the scene of a murder-suicide involving a mother and her infant child. Fitzsimmons was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. Experiencing this “devastating” incident led to Noonan and Fitzsimmons developing a friendship, she said in a statement. 

Fitzsimmons has been open about her struggles with postpartum depression. She was diagnosed in March 2025, about three weeks after giving birth, she said.

She was involuntarily committed to Lowell General Hospital for 12 hours on March 9, 2025, for treatment of postpartum depression. Emergency responders had been called to her home earlier that day after receiving a report that she was dealing with “mental health issues,” The Boston Globe reported. 

The following day, Fitzsimmons surrendered her department-issued pistol and at least one other privately owned gun, the Globe reported. Her license to carry was suspended, and she was placed on administrative leave by the town on April 30. She asked a judge to reinstate her license in May 2025. She had met with a therapist and was being treated by a psychiatrist after being released from Lowell General. On June 18, police cleared her to return to the job and restored her license to carry. Fitzsimmons was scheduled to return to work on July 4. 

An incident on June 28 led to Aylaian filing for a restraining order. He described it in an affidavit that he filed in order to apply for the restraining order. 

While at a location in Maine with Aylaian’s siblings and mutual friends, Fitzsimmons allegedly hit Aylaian in the face three times with a closed fist. Fearing for his life, he left the location with a friend and stayed at a hotel. Others who remained with Fitzsimmons told Aylaian that, even after he left, she “physically hit them to try and get to me” and was “heavily intoxicated,” he wrote in the affidavit. 

Fitzsimmons’s friends contacted police in Methuen, North Andover, and Bethel, Maine, because they worried she might try to hurt herself, her son, or Aylaian. When Aylaian wrote the affidavit, on June 30, he described how Fitzsimmons was “threatening to take the baby ‘far, far away for a long, long time.’” This language was consistent with how Fitzsimmons had spoken about killing herself in the past, he wrote. 

Aylaian said that Fitzsimmons had threatened to kill herself and the baby while pregnant. He alleged that she struck him with her hands and feet multiple times on different occasions.

“I fear if she does not have me she will kill the baby because she has said nothing besides me is worth living for,” Aylaian wrote. 

Fitzsimmons maintains that Aylaian’s affidavit is full of false allegations and lies. Her lawyers have said that it was “deliberately and widely leaked” in order to “smear” Fitzsimmons’s name in the press. 

“Her significant other and baby’s father betrayed her with lies and false allegations designed to take her baby from her and extract himself, in the worst faith and cowardly fashion imaginable, from their relationship,” they wrote in court documents. 

Fitzsimmons is adamant that she has not, and would never, put her son in harm’s way. 

“Becoming a mother has always been my dream and I never made any threats towards my baby. That allegation specifically makes me sick to my stomach. I was alone with my baby day in and day out for months caring for him as my fiancé frequently worked 24-48 hour shifts, but conveniently there were never any concerns up until now,” Fitzsimmons said in a statement she released after the shooting last summer. 

The shooting

Many of the alleged details of the actual shooting were laid out in a police report filed by a Massachusetts State Police sergeant who interviewed the North Andover officers who were at the scene. 

Just after 6 p.m. on June 30, 2025, three North Andover police officers, including Noonan, arrived at 125 Phillips Brook Road. Fitzsimmons and Aylaian had been living there with their infant son. Aylaian had been granted the restraining order earlier that day, and the three officers brought the order to serve Fitzsimmons. In accordance with the court order, the officers intended to remove all the firearms from the home, according to the report. 

Aylaian had been awarded custody of their child, who was 4 months old at the time. One of the officers told Fitzsimmons that Aylaian would be taking the child. About 10 minutes after the officers arrived, Aylaian was called to the house to gather his belongings and take custody of the boy. Fitzsimmons began to gather clothing, diapers, and other items for her son around the house. Two officers escorted her throughout the house as she did so, moving from the first floor to the second. Fitzsimmons told them that all of her firearms were locked in a safe in the basement, according to the report. 

Fitzsimmons’s mother and Aylaian arrived at the house around this time. When Fitzsimmons was told that Aylaian was there, she asked one of the officers to keep him away from her. That officer went downstairs to monitor Aylaian, leaving Fitzsimmons alone with Noonan on the second floor, according to the report. 

The two officers who were not with Fitzsimmons on the second floor at the time of the shooting provided similar accounts of the incident to the MSP sergeant. One said that, while on the first floor, he heard Noonan shout “Kelsey don’t do it, Kelsey, don’t do it,” followed by two gunshots. The other officer said that he heard Noonan scream “Kelsey” followed by two gunshots, according to the report. 

Noonan was also interviewed. He said that Fitzsimmons was kneeling on the ground, folding laundry in her bedroom, just before the shooting. Noonan, who was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, saw Fitzsimmons face toward him and then lunge toward an area behind a door. She reappeared with a gun and pointed it directly at Noonan, he told the MSP sergeant. Fitzsimmons pulled the trigger, according to the report. 

Noonan heard the gun click, but no round was fired. Fitzsimmons began to stand up as Noonan removed his own gun from its holster. As Fitzsimmons tried to load her weapon, Noonan said that he gave her several commands, including “drop the gun and don’t do it.” At this point, Noonan believed that Fitzsimmons was trying to kill him. He fired one round. She continued trying to load her gun, and Noonan fired a second shot. It struck Fitzsimmons, according to the report.

The three officers immediately began to render aid to Fitzsimmons and requested an EMS response. Noonan told the other two officers that Fitzsimmons pointed a gun at him, leading to him shooting her. A fourth officer arrived at the scene after the shooting. He removed the magazine from the gun that was found next to Fitzsimmons and reported that there was a round of ammunition in the weapon. He placed it in a safe. After authorities executed a search warrant at the house, they recovered four semi-automatic guns, according to the report. 

Fitzsimmons offered a different account of the events that led to the shooting. She said she received a call from Aylaian on June 30, asking her to meet him at a park to go for a walk with their son. Fitzsimmons waited at the park for almost three hours without hearing from Aylaian. He never showed up, and she went home, Fitzsimmons said in a statement.

About an hour later, as she was sitting on her couch feeding her son, Fitzsimmons heard a knock on her door. She was “very confused” to see three of her colleagues. They told her that her fiancé had filed a restraining order against her and that they would be taking her son away with “no contact allowed.” They also told her that her firearms license would be suspended and that her career would be “taken away too.” She packed up bags containing essential items for her son, passed him off to one of the responding officers, and went to her bedroom, she said. 

“In that horrible moment, I didn’t want to live after my whole world was turned upside down, in the matter of a 10 second conversation due to someone alleging horrible, untrue things,” Fitzsimmons said in her statement. 

Fitzsimmons said that she made a “half-hearted attempt” to kill herself. She insists that she never pointed her gun anywhere except toward her own temple. She described Noonan as a friend who she would never think to intentionally harm. She also criticized his actions. 

“As a police officer, I am trained to know what to do if I encounter a suicidal individual, who is only displaying a threat to themselves. I certainly was not trained to shoot a suicidal person in the chest,” Fitzsimmons said. 

NAPD officers do not wear body cameras. Fitzsimmons accused the department of releasing a “vague and noncommittal” narrative after the shooting and said the department’s lack of body cameras led to her being wrongly accused of pointing her weapon at Noonan. 

After the shooting

Fitzsimmons was hospitalized for 53 days. She received treatment for “severe” lung, diaphragm, and liver damage at Massachusetts General Hospital. Fitzsimmons also suffered multiple broken ribs, according to court documents. 

Last August, while still hospitalized, Fitzsimmons was arrested and arraigned on one count of armed assault with intent to murder and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon. She was indicted in Essex Superior Court later that month, and the charges were presented to a grand jury. The grand jury chose to charge her with just one count of assault with a dangerous weapon.  

Fitzsimmons engaged with behavioral health experts while hospitalized and was “cleared of any mental health concerns” upon her discharge by an MGH psychiatrist and another consulting psychologist, according to court documents. Since then, she has undergone an “extensive Risk Assessment” by a licensed social worker, who has corroborated the findings of the other two clinicians. Fitzsimmons has been classified as having a “low risk of violent recidivism,” her attorneys wrote.

Fitzsimmons was transferred to a correctional center in Chicopee. Last September, she was briefly released before being ordered to return to custody a few days later because she could not comply with mandated alcohol testing due to her injuries. In late December, she was released again after her injuries had healed enough that she could blow into an alcohol testing device. Her lawyers have argued that the judge who made those decisions was biased against Fitzsimmons. 

She has alleged that Aylaian and others broke into the home on Phillips Brook Road soon after the shooting. Her legal team released surveillance footage showing the alleged break-in to members of the media. They said that Aylaian stole valuables belonging to Fitzsimmons and impersonated her online in order to withdraw money from a bank account and cancel a previously-booked trip. 

Essex District Attorney Paul Tucker’s office declined to press charges against Aylaian for the alleged break-in. Aylaian made several calls to NAPD asking for their accompaniment in retrieving his belongings from the house, Tucker’s office said. 

Aylaian admitted to breaking down the door with others in an interview with NBC10 Boston. 

“I had every legal right to get into my own home to get my belongings and more importantly, my son’s belongings,” he told the station. 

Fitzsimmons’s legal team says that Aylaian was no longer a resident of the home when he broke down the door, pointing to the June 30 affidavit where Aylaian listed his residence as being in Stow. 

They also argue that Aylaian is not being charged because Tucker’s office is relying on his testimony in the upcoming trial. He is included on the witness list, but not as a key witness. 

Fitzsimmons’s lawyers have accused Aylaian of smoking marijuana hundreds of times in the months leading up to the shooting, releasing surveillance footage to the media that purportedly shows Aylaian doing so. They sought a subpoena ordering the North Andover Fire Department to turn over any disciplinary records relating to Aylaian. The motion was denied. 

Aylaian was placed on paid administrative leave earlier this month pending the outcome of an unspecified investigation, WCVB reported. 

Fitzsimmons has been on house arrest since her release. She was initially ordered to remain at her mother’s home in Methuen, but earlier this month, Karp loosened a number of the conditions of her bail. She was allowed to move out of the family home in Methuen and get her own apartment, but must still comply with random visits from a probation officer to make sure she does not have weapons or alcohol in her home. 

In addition, Karp allowed Fitzsimmons to initiate visitations with her son and begin proceedings to seek custody.