The ex-Punta Gorda police officer charged in the shooting death of a woman during a citizens’ academy is asking for a change of venue for his trial. Lee Coel submitted hundreds of pages of documents yesterday, claiming the “nature and extent” of publicity about his case is cause for the move. Coel, who was fired in March, is requesting the trial be moved to Broward County. Coel, though, spent 14 years as a cop there before coming to Punta Gorda. Before he was fired, he claimed that he suffers from PTSD and other impairments that render him “unable to perform his duties as an officer, and that he has “total and permanent disabilities.”
