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NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — A Connecticut lady was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in jail for firing a gun several times in the lobby of a police department, the place an officer fired again however bulletproof glass prevented anybody from getting damage.
Suzanne Laprise walked into the Bristol police division in October 2023 distraught, inebriated and carrying a 9 mm pistol, police stated. She fired three pictures on the home windows of the entrance desk and two extra at an inside door, which officers had been standing behind as they tried to speak together with her.
An officer fired two pictures at Laprise from behind the door, however its glass home windows additionally had been bulletproof, police stated. After Laprise put her gun down, officers rushed into the foyer, shot her with a Taser and took her into custody.
Laprise, of close by Plainville, appeared briefly in New Britain Superior Court docket on Tuesday, when a decide imposed the jail sentence she agreed to when she pleaded responsible to tried first-degree assault in February. She was initially charged with tried homicide and different crimes.
Neither Laprise nor any law enforcement officials spoke on the sentencing.
“She’s a 53-year-old with no prior file who had lots of stressors in her life,” her public defender, Christopher Eddy, stated in a cellphone interview after the courtroom listening to. “She had monetary stress. She had psychological well being stress. She has a disabled baby. And she or he wished to kill herself that evening, and she or he’s fortunate that the Bristol police had been so skilled in how they apprehended her.”
The taking pictures got here a 12 months after two Bristol police officers were shot to death in an ambush whereas responding to a name.
State Inspector Basic Robert Devlin Jr. investigated the taking pictures involving Laprise and issued a report that included video from police division surveillance cameras and officers’ physique cameras. Devlin dominated that the officer who fired at Laprise was justified.
Police stated Laprise used a gun that belonged to her boyfriend on the time, who was a retired New York Metropolis police officer.