“Then they turned her over and that’s where we saw the bullet holes”, says Mary’s son Steve, who explained what his father witnessed.
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An investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is expected to take a few weeks.
Paquin said it was hard to tell how live ammunition got into the gun.
“Everyone involved in this accident is in a state of overwhelming shock and grief”, Lewis said in an earlier statement. One nagging problem was that Coel had a tendency to drive too fast and get lost on the way to calls, sometimes placing other officers waiting for him in danger, according to the records.
Officer Lee Coel accidentally shot and killed 73-year-old Mary Knowlton Tuesday night during a shoot-don’t shoot scenario.
“He is a bad police officer”, said attorney Scott Weinberg, who provided NBC with a copy of the dash cam video and confirmed that he has filed notice that he intends to sue Coel and the Punta Gorda police. “The situations escalate quickly, forcing fast decisions”.
Officer Coel had made headlines in recent months, after video of his K-9, Spirit, was posted on YouTube, showing the dog attacking a shirtless man on a bicycle for almost two minutes during an arrest last October. Police say an officer accidentally shot a woman to death during a citizen.
But the guns are either supposed to be loaded with blanks or “simunition guns” – real-looking weapons that fire a non-lethal projectile with reduced force. Knowlton was mistakenly struck with a live round, officials said.
Officer Lee Coel remains on administrative leave as the police and city do what they can for those affected.
Apparently, before working with the Punta Gorda Police Department, the 28-year-old was forced to resign from Florida’s Miramar Police Department after “failing to satisfactorily complete an agency field training program”.
A Facebook profile, which appears to belong to Knowlton, said she lives in Punta Gorda with her husband, and had been a librarian at a public library in Savage, Minnesota.
“I am 100 percent accountable for the actions of our department”, he said. A woman who answered a phone listed in public records for Coel said she didn’t want to talk and hung up. Coel was sacked from the Miramar Police Department after complaints of excessive force.
“This officer was involved in a K-9 apprehension incident”, Lewis said. Tania Rues, Miramar police spokeswoman, said Coel resigned, but could not comment on the reasons why. But in an addendum to his September 2013 application with the Punta Gorda force provided to NBC News by Weinberg, Coel wrote that he was “found to have committed two simple policy violations”.
Also discussed was a pending civil lawsuit against Coel, who ordered his K-9, Spirit, to attack a bicyclist he stopped for not using a light on his bike. Scott Weinberg took the man’s case in June, and that’s when he viewed Coel’s dashcam video of the arrest and informed local media about the case.
“I was demanding that he be fired months ago, and I was warning people he was going to kill somebody.”
A video showed Coel sending his K-9 to help take down a bicyclist, and then allowed the dog to stay latched on for almost two minutes.
She had moved to Florida after living for years in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.
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“We forgive you. I know my mom forgives you”.
