The Massachusetts police officer and new mom accused of pulling a gun on fellow officers trying to serve a restraining order will remain behind bars ahead of her trial — after she refused breathalyzer testing, the state’s supreme court ruled.
Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, will stay held without bail after she appealed a lower court’s decision to keep her jailed for refusing to comply with alcohol breathalyzer testing required for release, the Boston Globe reported.
Fitzsimmons’ attorneys argued she was improperly denied bail because of the breathalyzer requirement, suggesting that she could have done urine testing to monitor her sobriety and that her injuries prevented her from blowing into a breathalyzer.
The North Andover cop was shot in the chest in June after allegedly pointing a pistol at fellow officers coming to serve her a restraining order.
Fitzsimmons pulled the trigger on her weapon, but the gun wasn’t loaded. Police shot Fitzsimmons to subdue her.
She had given birth to a baby just months earlier in March and had been suffering some severe postpartum depression, leading her then-fiancé to allegedly fear for her and their child’s life and request a restraining order.
Fitzsimmons was hospitalized and then sent to jail for months after the accident before finally being released in September — only to be detained again within days over the breathalyzer matter, MassLive reported.
And Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court has now upheld that detention in a 10-page ruling.
“We conclude that the hearing judge did not abuse her discretion in denying the request and detaining Fitzsimmons,” the ruling obtained by the Globe read.
“After the August 28 dangerousness hearing, the hearing judge appropriately imposed the conditions restricting Fitzsimmons’s release, including the SCRAM [breathalyzer] requirement.
“Although Fitzsimmons argues that alcohol did not play a role in the June 30 incident, the material submitted by the Commonwealth at the August 28 hearing indicated that she ‘struggled with … aggression … and alcohol abuse,’” it continued, noting Fitzsimmons had been convicted of an alcohol-related misdemeanor in 2019.
Fitzsimmons’ trial for assault charges is expected to begin on Feb. 9.
She has pleaded not guilty and denied ever pointing a weapon at police — insisting that she had actually put the gun to her own head.
“My firearm was never pointed in any direction other than my temple,” she said in a July statement. “When I pulled the trigger, my gun did not fire. However, I immediately got shot in the chest by my colleague and friend.”
Fitzsimmons had been hospitalized in March for postpartum depression after her child’s February birth, and just two days before the shooting, she allegedly began making alarming threats about herself and her child.
That prompted her firefighter fiancé to seek custody of the child.
“I fear if she doesn’t have me she will kill the baby because she has said she has nothing besides me,” he wrote in a filing around June 29. “Fitzsimmons is a danger to myself, her son and herself.”
By June 30, Fitzsimmons was shot in the chest as cops tried to serve the ensuing restraining order.
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