Local News

North Andover officer shot by colleague is being smeared to distract from ‘botched response,’ lawyer says

Kelsey Fitzsimmons faces three felony charges, including assault to murder. The North Andover officer was shot as three colleagues attempted to serve her a restraining order.

North Andover Police Officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons. North Andover Police Department

July 10, 2025

3 minutes to read

The North Andover police officer who was shot by a colleague in an “armed confrontation” last week now faces three felony charges related to the incident. At the same time, her lawyer is alleging she is the victim of an “appalling campaign to criminalize her in order to deflect accountability” from the North Andover Police Department.

Kelsey Fitzsimmons was shot in the chest last Monday while off-duty, as three fellow North Andover police officers attempted to serve her a court-approved restraining order. That order was filed by her fiancé, who wrote in court documents that Fitzsimmons was causing him to fear for his own life and the life of their young child.

Fitzsimmons, 28, has been with the North Andover Police Department since last spring. She was on administrative leave at the time of the shooting, which occurred on Phillips Brooks Road. She survived and is in stable condition at a local hospital.

Three charges were filed against Fitzsimmons in Lawrence District Court in the wake of the shooting. She faces one charge of assault to murder and two charges of assault with a deadly weapon, according to court documents. She has not entered a plea yet.

Officials have released little information about the specific events that occurred before Fitzsimmons was shot. Essex District Attorney Paul Tucker said that one of the on-duty officers was “escorting” Fitzsimmons during the interaction when an “armed conflict” broke out.

Fitzsimmons had previously been involuntarily committed to Lowell General Hospital to be treated for postpartum depression. She surrendered her department-issued firearm and at least one privately owned weapon at that time, but it is unclear if her weapons were returned to her before the shooting.

In a lengthy statement released Wednesday, attorney Timothy Bradl said that he had been retained by Fitzsimmons, who plans to fight the charges against her.

“Kelsey is a new mother who was manifesting symptoms of postpartum depression at the time of the incident. She needed help. She needed compassion,” Bradl said.

Instead, she was shot and is now being smeared in the press in order to deflect attention from the “botched response” of the NAPD, he added.

NAPD Chief Charles Gray and others from the department did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

Bradl noted that state law bars the use of deadly force against a person exhibiting a danger only to themselves. Fitzsimmons and her attorneys plan to address the “fallacy” that the instant a gun appears, the correct response from a police officer is to fire first. Bradl also drew attention to the notion of “officer created jeopardy,” which he defined as a situation in which an officer creates dangerous circumstances that are in turn met with deadly force.

Bradl noted that this “officer created jeopardy” could be the result of inadequate training and said that he will look to obtain training records and information about prior, similar incidents.

“We will demand full transparency, and follow every lead where it takes us. We will call out every contradiction and expose every lie,” he said.

The restraining order against Fitzsimmons was “obtained by surprise, in an ex parte fashion,” Bradl said. He asserted that a probate court affidavit “full of hearsay and self-serving allegations” was “deliberately and widely leaked” in order to denigrate Fitzsimmons’s reputation.

That affidavit was filed by Fitzsimmons’s fiancé in Essex County Probate and Family Court in order to obtain the restraining order. A copy was provided to Boston.com last week by the court.

“Kelsey is threatening to take the baby ‘far, far away for a long, long time.’ This is how she has spoken about killing herself in the past. I fear that she will kill the baby at any moment,” Fitzsimmons’s fiancé wrote. “She punched her stomach repeatedly while pregnant, saying she would kill herself and the baby.”

He detailed how she allegedly struck him with a closed fist while they were in Maine earlier this summer, causing him to leave to stay in a hotel and prompting friends to contact authorities.

In the affidavit, Fitzsimmons’s fiancé also noted that she is a police officer with a license to carry and expressed concerns regarding her reaction to being served with the restraining order.

Fitzsimmons remains in “grave condition in the hospital,” Bradl said, and he said the “leak” of the affidavit is an attempt to discredit her as she “fights for her life.”

“We call on the public, the media, and all those who care about due process and accountability to watch this case closely and wait for all the facts to come out,” he said. “Consider issues related to postpartum depression in young mothers, and the use of deadly force by police when faced with those suffering from emotional or mental impairment. This should never have happened — and it must never happen again.”