Punta Gorda City Manager Howard Kunik is waiting for the results of an internal affairs report before he decides whether suspended Police Chief Tom Lewis keeps or loses his job. Lewis was acquitted of culpable negligence the last week of June in the death of 73-year-old Mary Knowlton during a shoot/don’t shoot demonstration at police headquarters last August.

The city fired Officer Lee Coel after he was charged with felony manslaughter with a firearm for shooting Knowlton with a revolver he’d mistakenly loaded with real so-called wadcutter bullets, rather than blanks. His trial has not been set.

For the first time since the shooting, Mary Knowlton’s widower Gary, and their son Steve, spoke with WGCU News. They were interviewed at the Knowlton’s home in Punta Gorda Isles.

August 9, 2016

Gary and Mary Knowlton were high school sweethearts. They’d been married for 55 years and moved here full-time in 2014. Mary became very active in the community, focusing much of her volunteer work on the building of a new library. She became active in the Chamber of Commerce and was part of the group of approximately 40 members who went to the city’s police headquarters last August 9th to participate in a so-called Citizens Academy familiarization tour. Gary accompanied her. The next morning, they were to leave on a trip to Lake Tahoe, where they were going to spend time with family. The trip never happened.

Mary was randomly selected to participate in the shoot/don’t shoot demonstration that went horribly wrong. When she was shot, Gary was standing with the Chamber members, roughly 20 or 30 feet away.

One of two bullets that hit her pierced a major artery. She died in the ambulance on the way to Lee Memorial’s Trauma Center. The weather was too stormy for her to be evacuated by helicopter.

Within a few months, Gary, his 51-year-old son Steve and 54-year-old son Bill, were approached by the city of Punta Gorda and offered a $2 million dollar settlement, which they accepted.

The Aftermath

Steve Knowlton described the effect of Mary’s death on his father. “It’s devastated him. My dad looked at least five, if not ten years younger a year ago,” said Steve. “I mean this has just sucked the joy out of our lives. I mean, you come in this house, it’s not the same, it’s quiet. My mom, she was a larger than life character.”

Gary Knowlton said as time goes on, things have gotten harder for him.

“I find that any understanding of what our family has been going through for the last ten months—it doesn’t seem like people really understand,” said Gary. “Because things have gotten very hard for us to accept. You know—for instance, we had this settlement with the city; people were kind of cruel enough to say, well, ‘You sure that’s enough money?’ Things like that, you know.”

And he added they were saying it sarcastically.

“So basically I kind of thought that, you know, we’re the victims, mainly Mary, but the rest of us were under pain and stress the whole time,” said Gary. “There are an awful lot of good people that have been nice to us; I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that. You asked me about how we’re taking some of the bad part of it. I can’t get used to being living alone. It’s very hard for me. Because I’m always waking up in the morning and I’m expecting Mary to be there, and she’s not. The boys are having a hard time, too. So the long and short of it is that I find that as these trials go on, it gets worse, too. I still am hurting bad and I don’t know when it’ll go away.”

Both Gary and Steve acknowledged they were not prepared to see a small group of Punta Gorda residents demonstrating in front of City Hall last February, urging city manager Howard Kunik to “save our chief” when Chief Tom Lewis was charged with misdemeanor culpable negligence. Gary said it really hurt for them to hear Kunik tell the media Lewis was a good person at the same time he suspended him with pay—a suspension that continues. And they said they were not able to understand how Kunik could say it’s okay for Lewis to take money from citizens—and from members of the police department—for his defense fund.

Gary Knowlton sat through much of Chief Lewis’s trial. Steve sat through through all of it.

“I felt, especially with this trial, I expected that Mary’s death would mean something, and yet it seemed like everybody was more concerned about saving Tom Lewis than they were what happened to Mary,” said Gary Knowlton. “And I took that the hard way. They trivialized Mary, just like those people that were protesting the day Kunik was saying how wonderful Lewis was.”

Gary Knowlton said a guilty verdict would have meant some vindication. But Chief Lewis was acquitted.

“I know there’s a silent majority here in the town, but the silent majority hasn’t said anything,” said Gary. “They’re just kind of laying in the weeds. I don’t get it. Maybe they’re waiting to see if Kunik is giving Lewis his job back. I don’t know.”

The nature of the charge against Lewis was also problematic for the Knowltons. The charge was misdemeanor culpable negligence, which both prosecutors and defense attorneys acknowledge is especially difficult to prove. Before the trial, the defense asked the judge to modify the standard jury instructions to explicitly follow a precedent setting 1985 case known as Azima v. State. It grew out of a doctor implanting an IUD in a woman who was already pregnant. In an appellate decision, the court ruled that, “there was no evidence that Azima’s negligent insertion of the IUD would likely cause death or great bodily harm. In the absence of such evidence, the jury could not convict Azima of culpable criminal negligence.”

In the Lewis trial, once the defense rested, Judge Devin George ruled the Azima decision would be the law that was given to the jury as part of its instructions. Criminal defense attorneys told WGCU she had no choice. Azima was a 2nd District Circuit Court of Appeal Ruling, and she was bound by it. Could she have issued the ruling before the trial began—as the defense requested? Yes. But she chose not to.

Consequently, unless the jury could find Chief Lewis knew his actions would likely cause death or great bodily harm to Mary Knowlton, they would have to find him not guilty. And although Gary Knowlton disagreed with the ruling, he said it’s “crazy talk” to believe the chief intended to harm his wife. Still, he said the trial made no sense to him.

“To me it was just kind of a joke, especially when the judge waits until the last day to make this change in the ruling, so that the poor prosecutor, he doesn’t have a prayer of winning,” said Gary.

Former Police Officer Lee Coel

“Lewis did something wrong,” said Steve Knowlton. “The first mistake he made was keeping Coel on after the dog mauling. He was told by several lawyers that someday Lee Coel is going to kill somebody. He was warned several times. Lee Coel has cost this community over $2 million. He’s an expensive cop to have on the force.”

Nine months before Lee Coel shot Mary Knowlton, he allowed his police dog to severely injure a man who was riding his bike at night without a proper taillight. The video of the attack made news nationwide. The city settled with the man for $77,000. Coel was given a few days of re-training. Steve Knowlton said he believes Chief Lewis deliberately chose Coel to participate in the Chamber of Commerce demonstration to help rehabilitate his image.

“In the back of my mind I think he was doing PR work for Lee Coel, to get his status back in the community to rise,” said Steve. “It backfired on him, and it ruined our lives.”

Before the trial, the defense moved to prevent the jury from seeing photos or video showing what happened in the moments after Mary Knowlton was shot. The jury did see silent surveillance video leading up to the moment the shots were fired. The jury was also not allowed to hear anything about Lee Coel’s past—not his quitting a job on the Miramar Police force while under investigation for use of excessive force; not his incident with the K-9.

Steve Knowlton said that belittled what happened to his mother. “They were using terms like injury in the trial. Just to minimize. It was a Disney version of what happened in that trial. The video didn’t have any volume. It didn’t show the horror that the police –or that the citizens went through watching my mom shot, turn around, fall down. And then find out that she’s really hurt severely. Use the word injured? That’s a pretty lame word to use in a scenario like that,” said Steve.

No Apologies

The Knowltons said even though they received a $2 million settlement from the city, it distresses them that no Punta Gorda government official ever reached out and apologized.

Gary Knowlton described how the settlement came about. “A friend of mine worked through the representative of the council, never did meet with them. I never did ask for that, but they offered the $2 million. And I said, from what I understand to go forward and try to gain any more, would be frivolous, because it might take five or ten years, and then even if you win five or ten million, whatever it is, they might not even have it to give you. So, to make a long story short, the fact that this was done through a friend, I don’t remember getting an, ‘I’m sorry,’” said Gary.

The settlement agreement Gary Knowlton and the city signed says the city does not admit any wrongdoing or accept any responsibility. Steve Knowlton said he believes it is responsible.

“A horrible atrocity happened here and maybe you should research all the facts of what happened and what he [Tom Lewis] allowed to happen. And what would have happened to somebody else,” said Steve.

Testimony at Chief Lewis’ trial elicited the fact that there were 25 bullets missing from the box of .38-caliber wadcutters Lee Coel thought were blanks. Four of them were fired the night Mary Knowlton was killed. Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation transcripts reveal that immediately after the shooting, Coel blurted out this was the ammunition he used all the time. Testimony also raised the notion that Coel had fired that same ammunition during dog training demonstrations for civilians at the Charlotte County Sheriff’s gun range.

What’s Next?

Lee Coel has been fired and will stand trial for felony manslaughter sometime next year unless there’s a plea deal. He’s out on bail.

Gary Knowlton is torn between remaining in Punta Gorda where he has friends and support from his church, or moving to the East Coast to be with his two sons, and try to leave the memories of last August 9th behind. Meanwhile, Punta Gorda residents wait for City Manager Howard Kunik to decide if he will he fire Chief Tom Lewis after an internal affairs investigation, or allow him to remain chief of police.