“The situations escalate quickly, forcing fast decisions”.
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Lewis said he is taking “full responsibility” for the shooting death of Mary Knowlton, and that the department was working to provide grief assistance to the family and the community. “We were not aware that live ammunition was used”.
Immediately after the shooting, the police chief says authorities secured the scene and called the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate. “However, clearly they use dummy guns, no live ammunition, obviously no firearms”, Loar said.
Officer Lee Coel, 28, was put on administrative leave as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates why real ammunition was used by mistake at an event created to bring police and the public together in the small Gulf Coast city of Punta Gorda.
“He’s very grief-stricken”, said Lewis, who added that counseling will be made available next week to others affected by the incident.
“It’s horrifying actually, to think that that could happen”, said Matthews Police public information officer Tim Aycock. She and her husband Gary had previously lived in the Minneapolis area.
Alongside dozens of people, the chief watched Tuesday’s shooting unfold. “She brought us up right”.
The couple had two sons, Hartwigsen told the AP.
Mary Knowlton of Austin was killed when a gun that was suppposed to be loaded with blanks was sacked at her.
Photos of her were taken moments before the horrific accident, during a shoot/don’t shoot exercise at the Punta Gorda Department. Coel was not disciplined, according to The News-Press.
Hartwigsen said Mary and her husband would come back to Minnesota periodically to visit.
“She was passionate [but] she was never mean-spirited, never catty”, Katie Mazzi, a close friend, told the paper. “She was honestly one of the kindest, most decent human beings I ever met”.
With suspicions running high between police and many citizens in recent years, particularly in minority communities, Vasquez said, a death like the one in Punta Gorda is extremely unfortunate.
Weinberg, who termed Coel a “cowboy”, said his client was severely injured when he was mauled by Coel’s K-9 for several minutes on October 30, 2015.
A Punta Gorda-based attorney says Coel shouldn’t have been a police officer in the first place.
Along the way, he encountered problems. “We all forgive him”. A week later, he said, he was given the opportunity to resign. Tania Rues, Miramar police spokeswoman, said Coel resigned, but could not comment on the reasons why.
A year and a half after he joined Punta Gorda, Coel ran into a problem when he encountered a shoeless, shirtless man on a bicycle at night with no lights.
“Stop resisting”, Coel repeatedly says to Schumacher.
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Knowlton, 73, was a longtime librarian in Minnesota and worked at the Prior Lake branch of the Scott County Library, said Library Director Jake Grussing.
