Lee Coel is charged with one count of felony manslaughter in the 2016 shooting death of Mary Knowlton in Punta Gorda.

A former Punta Gorda police officer charged in the fatal shooting of a retired librarian won't go to trial until more than three years after her death.

Lee Coel, 30, a former K-9 officer with the Punta Gorda Police Department, shot and killed retired librarian Mary Knowlton, 73, during a citizens training exercise in 2016. He thought he'd loaded his personal revolver — which he'd brought from home — with blanks.

If everything moves according to schedule, Coel will be tried in October.

"Right now, it is scheduled for Oct. 15, and that could change depending upon any one of a number of events that occur before then," said attorney Thomas Sclafani, who is defending Coel with attorney Alvin Entin.

Circuit Judge Margaret O. Steinbeck of the 20th Judicial Circuit is presiding over the case. She is considering whether the trial will be relocated from Charlotte County.

Coel's repeated requests for a change of venue were among several factors contributing to the trial's lengthy delay.

First, the state listed 135 witnesses — all of whom had to be deposed. The normal case has between 10 to 20 witnesses, Sclafani said. Depositions are still being taken.

Then, the prosecution discovered undisclosed information surrounding the case from the Police Department, including "an incredible number of negative and threatening comments toward Mr. Coel," Sclafani said.

Coel is charged with one count of felony manslaughter. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He has pleaded not guilty.

What happened

On Aug. 9, 2016, the Police Department hosted a citizens training academy for the city's Chamber of Commerce — with more than 30 influential community leaders.

Coel was playing the "bad guy," while Knowlton was randomly selected to play the police officer. She was given a handgun that fired non-lethal training rounds — which were hand-counted before the exercise — but no protective equipment.

She'd never held a gun in her life.

According to court documents, Coel was supposed to pretend he was about to burglarize a vehicle, then fire blanks downward to startle Knowlton.

Instead, he fired his gun toward Knowlton. And what came out weren't blanks, but wadcutters: live, flat-tipped target ammunition that resemble blanks but contain lead bullets.

Two of them ricocheted off of nearby cars and struck Knowlton — one in the arm, one perforating the aorta. She bled profusely in the parking lot of the police headquarters as her husband and others watched from feet away. She died at the hospital.

Although Coel was placed on administrative leave while the department investigated, it wasn't until March 2017 when he was fired — two weeks after he was criminally charged.

Mistaken ammunition



According to court documents, Coel obtained in July 2016 what he thought was blank ammunition from Lt. Katie Heck, a former K-9 officer with the department and Coel's immediate supervisor. She had gotten it from her husband, a lieutenant with the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, who'd discovered it while the couple was moving out of their home.

Heck was also the one who assigned Coel the "bad guy" role in the use-of-force demonstration.

Of the three boxes Coel received from Heck, he said, two were labeled "Blazer." The other box was incompatible with Coel's Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver.

When Coel tested the "Blazer" ammunition, he said, he didn't notice anything different about its weight or appearance. But he said the Blazer "blanks" were slightly louder than the Winchester blanks he normally used.

On Aug. 2, 2016, Coel said, he attended a citizens training academy for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, where he used his revolver to fire 10 Blazer rounds. He said neither deputies from the Sheriff's Office nor officers from the Police Department suggested the Blazer rounds were "anything but blanks."

He also noted that the two agencies "observed without comment" as he used his own weapon for the exercise.

So when one of his supervisors, Capt. Jeff Woodard, brought only one Glock from the department's armory for the Aug. 9 exercise, Coel again brought his own weapon from home. It was not inspected before the exercise.

A cloudy past



Coel graduated from the Broward College Police Academy, where he maintains in court documents that the 80-hour firearms curriculum never mentioned wadcutters.

After that, he spent 14 months with the Miramar Police Department before being fired in 2013 for "failure to satisfactorily complete agency field training." Records show that he'd also received two complaints of excessive force during his time there.

He was hired by the Punta Gorda Police Department in March 2014. His training records with the department show he completed a four-day drug investigation course in January 2015 and a three-day radar and laser class in June 2016. He was not a certified instructor.

Shifting blame

The 2016 tragedy prompted a series of finger-pointing within the Police Department.

There was no appointed safety officer for the exercise. The department had adapted its exercise from a YouTube video without developing written lesson plans or scripts. Officers couldn't distinguish between blanks and live ammunition. The immediate vicinity was not cordoned off, and protective gear was not required. Participants and onlookers were not searched for unauthorized weapons or live ammunition, and no safety briefings were conducted before the exercise — just some of the revelations uncovered by investigations following Knowlton's death.

And Coel's departure offered a glimpse of what was to come for the Police Department. Woodard resigned in June 2017 after admitting that he had seen Coel's weapon before the training exercise and did not inspect it. Heck now works as a public information officer for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office.

Soon after, the police chief came under fire of his own.

The same day that Coel was charged with manslaughter, Punta Gorda Police Chief Tom Lewis was charged with misdemeanor culpable negligence. Although a jury acquitted Lewis in June 2017, the Police Department conducted its own investigation that determined he had a "casual approach" to safety during the shoot/don't shoot exercise.

During several meetings with Punta Gorda City Manager Howard Kunik, Lewis refused to resign and instead offered to accept a demotion to lieutenant. But Kunik objected. He feared that keeping Lewis in the department would only create "confusion, conflict and division."

Lewis was fired on Aug. 30, 2017, more than a year after Knowlton's death.

Delay of justice

Citing extensive media coverage and threatening comments over social media, Coel twice requested a change of venue — once in 2017, and again in 2019. He claimed that a local trial would impair a jury's ability to reach an objective verdict and sought to move the trial to Broward County.

His first request was denied. His second request was granted "in part," pending the judge's ability to find an impartial jury. But if the trial is relocated, it won't be in Broward County. Instead, it will likely be in Fort Myers, where Steinbeck presides, according to Sclafani.

In March 2018, Coel's attorneys asked the court to dismiss the charges, which further prolonged the case.

"I had absolutely no intention to harm Mrs. Knowlton, or of placing her or anyone else in danger," Coel's motion-to-dismiss states. "I truly believed that the rounds I fired were in fact blank rounds that would not injure Mrs. Knowlton or anyone else given the distance between us.

"I would never, under any circumstances, knowingly use live rounds in a shoot/don’t-shoot scenario or in any public demonstration or K-9 training exercise. This was a tragic accident."

His motion to dismiss was also denied.

After he was fired from the Police Department, Coel filed a lawsuit in November 2017 against the Punta Gorda Board of Trustees for denying him disability pension. His case includes statements from two physicians who claim that he suffered post-traumatic stress after the fatal shooting.

A judge awarded Coel $12,590.70 in attorneys fees and costs in September. But if he's convicted of manslaughter, he will still be forced to forfeit all of his "rights and benefits," including the pension.

Meanwhile, Knowlton's husband, Gary, accepted a $2,060,234.23 settlement paid out from the city's insurance and damage recovery funds. The agreement made no admission of fault or blame on behalf of the city or its police department.