Woman gets 12 years in prison for shooting up Connecticut police department lobby

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — A Connecticut woman was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison for firing a gun several times in the lobby of a police department, where an officer fired back but bulletproof glass prevented anyone from getting hurt.

Suzanne Laprise walked into the Bristol police department in October 2023 distraught, under the influence of alcohol and carrying a 9 mm pistol, police said. She fired three shots at the windows of the front desk and two more at an interior door, which officers were standing behind as they tried to talk with her.

An officer fired two shots at Laprise from behind the door, but its glass windows also were bulletproof, police said. After Laprise put her gun down, officers rushed into the lobby, shot her with a Taser and took her into custody.

Laprise, of nearby Plainville, appeared briefly in New Britain Superior Court on Tuesday, when a judge imposed the prison sentence she agreed to when she pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree assault in February. She was initially charged with attempted murder and other crimes.

Neither Laprise nor any police officers spoke at the sentencing.

“She’s a 53-year-old with no prior record who had a lot of stressors in her life,” her public defender, Christopher Eddy, said in a phone interview after the court hearing. “She had financial stress. She had mental health stress. She has a disabled child. And she wanted to kill herself that night, and she’s lucky that the Bristol police were so professional in how they apprehended her.”

The shooting came a year after two Bristol police officers were shot to death in an ambush while responding to a call.

State Inspector General Robert Devlin Jr. investigated the shooting involving Laprise and issued a report that included video from police department surveillance cameras and officers' body cameras. Devlin ruled that the officer who fired at Laprise was justified.

Police said Laprise used a gun that belonged to her boyfriend at the time, who was a retired New York City police officer.