The trial of former North Andover police officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons took a significant turn during cross-examination of the officer who shot her — and the inconsistencies that surfaced are exactly the kind a judge remembers when it's time to decide.
Fitzsimmons faces one count of assault with a dangerous weapon, accused of pointing her service weapon at Officer Patrick Noonan as he and colleagues served her a restraining order obtained by her then-fiancé. She has pleaded not guilty. Her defense maintains she was in a severe mental health crisis, that the gun was aimed only at herself, and that Noonan fatally misread what he was seeing. With no body cameras and no video of the shooting itself, everything the court has to work with is testimony — and that testimony is now under serious scrutiny.
Defense attorney Timothy Bradl confronted Noonan with conflicting statements about the number of shots fired and how quickly they came. He raised a prior call both officers responded to — a murder-suicide involving a mother and her baby, while Fitzsimmons was twenty weeks pregnant — and the personal text exchange that followed, in which Noonan shared that he'd once been in a dark place himself. He pressed Noonan on prior testimony describing the immediate aftermath of the shooting that Noonan had apparently forgotten to mention this time around.
Noonan acknowledged he briefly considered, in the moment, whether the gun might not have been aimed at him at all.
The day's final witness was Michelle Mitchell, a friend and would-be bridesmaid, who testified she watched Fitzsimmons drive past the house where the decision to file the restraining order was being made — crying, saying she needed Justin — with no idea what was being decided inside.
The judge has approved a visit to the home where the shooting occurred. He will see the room for himself. Whatever that space tells him becomes part of the evidence. This case is nearly at its close — and the verdict rests with one judge and what he makes of a story that two people tell very differently.
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