MANCHESTER, NH – Michael MacNeilly, the Manchester police officer accused of assaulting his pregnant wife, took the stand Tuesday and denied all accusations against him.
MacNeilly met his wife, Shannon, through a dating app in October 2022. They married in March 2023 and separated the following October after she filed for a restraining order accusing him of a series of assaults including one when she was 37-weeks pregnant and another weeks after she delivered their daughter by C-section.
MacNeilly, testifying under direct examination by his attorney Eric Wilson in 9th Circuit – District Division – Manchester, said in the spring and summer his relationship with his wife was strained. Shannon, he said, would harangue him with suspicions and accusations of him cheating on her with other women. It was untrue, he said, but the accusations were constant.
He said he was walking on eggshells around her and thought it best to ignore her. On Aug.7, 2023, MacNeilly said he woke up to find the Hinge app – which he deleted in December 2023 – back on his cell phone which he had placed in a charger on his night stand. Shannon was the only one in the house who could have done that, he said.
MacNeilly said he chose not to mention the app to Shannon because “it wasn’t an argument I wanted to have.”
When he was in the shower that day, he said Shannon came in and confronted him about posts from the past. He said she kept opening the shower curtain and he kept closing it. His wife, he said, told him he was dishonest and a cheater. Shannon testified that he reached out of the shower and slapped her in the face that day.
Asked by Wilson if he slapped her, MacNeilly said, “Absolutely not.”
MacNeilly is charged with six counts of simple assault, and one charge each of criminal mischief and obstructing the report of the crime. The alleged incidents took place between Aug. 27 and Oct. 2, 2023, and accuse him of slapping her; shoving her onto a couch, irritating her C-section; grabbing her chin and pushing her head into a door; hitting her in the mouth with a metal beverage bottle, and shoving her to the floor. The criminal mischief offense accused him of damaging her cell phone by throwing it against a wall while the obstructing a report of crime accuse him of preventing her from reporting an offense to law enforcement or request emergency medical attention.
MacNeilly said he began video recording his wife to “protect himself” and took a screenshot of himself with water on his face after she poured water on him while he was sleeping.
He took a photo of a broken door latch which, he said, Shannon broke. That day, after she had continuously screamed at him, he took the baby and went into a bedroom and latched the door. Shannon, he said, “shouldered the door” breaking the latch and forcing the door open.
In October, MacNeilly said he received a text from a woman friend congratulating him on the birth of his daughter. He deleted the message but he said Shannon “freaked out” after seeing him do it. He told her who had sent the message and gave her the needed info to message the woman back.
Shannon did, he said. What happened, Wilson asked. “She said maybe it wasn’t her; it was someone else,” he recalled.
He denied ever pushing her onto the couch or throwing her cell phone against a wall, breaking it. He said Shannon wanted to see his cell phone and he refused to give it to her. She followed him into the kitchen and tried to grab it. When she did, he said she dropped her cell phone, breaking it.
He also recounted that one time she told him she hoped he was shot and killed while on duty.
On Oct. 17, 2023, the two had yet another argument and Shannon screamed. He went into the bedroom and called a co-worker to see if anyone had called police. Twenty minutes later, two police supervisors arrived at their Ward Street home to find out what was going on. Shannon told them he hadn’t assaulted her that night but he had in the past.
Attorney John Gasaway, prosecutor for the New Hampshire Department of Safety, questioned MacNeilly about the video recordings he made of his wife. MacNeilly said he did that “just to protect myself.”
He asked if some were recorded without her knowledge. MacNeilly said that “she was generally aware.” He agreed that sometimes when she asked if he was recording her, he would say he wasn’t even though he was.
MacNeilly also denied he was trying to make a “justifiable defense” by saying that Shannon called him names and treated him so badly that he was justified in what he did.
Shannon, the prosecutor said in questioning MacNeilly, wanted to set limits on his relationship with the woman he had dated prior to getting together with her. “You didn’t want to accept that as a boundary,” Gasaway said. “You wanted to do whatever you wanted to do.”
“I wouldn’t say it was like that,” MacNeilly said.
“You wanted to treat Shannon the way you saw fit,” Gasaway said.
“No,” MacNeilly said.
Gasaway, in questioning MacNeilly, focused on a recording he made in which Shannon says he hit her. The recording stops as soon as she says that. Gasaway said when Shannon made the accusation, MacNeilly cut her off.
Gasaway said it wasn’t the only time Shannon said he put his hands on her. He said there was another recording where she said he pushed her.
“I don’t know. There could have been,” MacNeilly said.
MacNeilly testified for about 45 minutes. He will retake the stand when the trial continues for a fourth day, yet to be scheduled.
Gasaway estimated there would be another two hours of testimony.
MacNeilly was arrested in April after turning himself in to authorities and was placed on paid administrative leave. While New Hampshire State Police were conducting the investigation, MacNeilly worked in dispatch.
His wife obtained a domestic violence petition in Family Court, resulting in a restraining order preventing him from possessing firearms. Police took his service weapon from him along with 16 guns stored in a safe at his home.
At the time of the alleged abuse, Shannon MacNeilly did not file any police reports
After the Oct. 17, 2023 incident, she sought a restraining order in Family Court where she filed a domestic violence petition. In it, she said on Aug. 10, 2023, she was 37 weeks pregnant when MacNeilly slapped her in the face. On Aug. 30, 2023, she said MacNeilly, while holding their then 7-day-old infant daughter, threw a YETI aluminum water container from across the room and it hit her in the face. On Sept. 7, 2023, she said he shoved her so hard she fell onto the couch, “my C-section incision hurt and I asked to go to the Hospital and he said no, he took my keys, cell phone and laptop so I couldn’t call for help.”
On Sept, 27, 2023, she alleged he, while holding the baby in one hand, grabbed her by her chin with his other hand and pushed her head hard into the front door.
On Oct 2, 2023, she said he pushed her down on the kitchen floor and threw her phone over the bassinet “that our baby was sleeping in, it hit the wall and broke.”
In court documents, MacNeilly said it was his wife’s extreme cruelty that led to the breakdown of the marriage.
He said she threatened to falsify allegations of domestic violence against him to gain advantage in their divorce case and “to ruin his police career, and damage his relationship with his child.”
