Little 'Warrior' Girl, 3, Doing 'Great' After Being Shot On Long Island Last Week: Dad

LONG ISLAND, NY —It was near bedtime when Lovely Azilee-Louise Toney was jumping up and down on her family’s couch in the living room of the apartment she shared with them in Ridge last Tuesday, when there were several popping sounds.

The family thought it was fireworks being set off in the neighborhood, though her father, James Toney, knew the difference between fireworks and gunshots.

Still processing what was transpiring, the spunky little three-year-old jumped off the couch and ran to Toney before looking up at him.

She stood motionless for about five seconds, not crying, but he could tell something was wrong.
That was when he saw the blood on her shirt.

“My daughter is a warrior,” Toney said in an interview with Patch on Sunday.

Lovely had been shot in her hand, and abdomen with a bullet piercing her tiny body in multiple places.

Before that moment, he would not have expected a child her age to do what she did.

“I might have been crying and hollering a little more than what she was,” he said.

The next thought that he had was that someone intentionally shot bullets through the front window to wound him and they were waiting for the family outside.

Toney was shot in the arm in a Bellport home invasion “gone wrong” back in 2017.

“We can’t say how a three-year-old should act when they get shot,” he said. “I had one go into a muscle myself. I don't see how my daughter was able to stand there like a champ. Like, I swear I would have been on the floor, you know, hollering; I wouldn’t want to move.”

“A hot piece of lead just went through her stomach, liver, kidney, and hand,” he said.

His mind raced with thoughts of how he, the child, her mother, Cathy Marie Serrano, and his son could escape with only one exit from the unit.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Toney said.

He scooped up his daughter to bring her outside the apartment, but when he got outside, he saw there were police officers everywhere taking cover.

“I don't know why they are here or what they are doing, but thank the Lord they are here to take my daughter,” he said.

The officers had been outside the unit next door where they were investigating a man wanted for a slaying in Central Islip back in June, Suffolk police said. When the suspect, Gary Jones, realized they were on to him, he began shooting, according to police.

Jones, 38, of North Amityville shot himself inside the apartment to avoid arrest, police said.

It was his bullets that sprayed into the apartment, striking Lovely as she played, according to police.

The officers put Lovely and Serrano in the back of a patrol car and rushed them to Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead.

In dramatic bodycam footage, the officers can be seen frantically whisking Lovely out of the car, with one breathlessly telling staff, “A baby’s been shot,” Newsday reported.

If there is any message in this, parents should take a more protective watch over their children no matter where they are, he said.

“Even in your home because you never know what your neighbors are up to or what your neighbors are doing or are holding in your neighbor's house because we don't all sit down and watch our neighbors 24/7,” he said.

Toney said the police officers who helped save his daughter did an “amazing job” and he could not have been more grateful, crediting them for treating his child as if she was their own.

“No parents, no relatives, my cousin on the phone or my family, nobody should be able to get a phone call like this or to see something like this – Nobody,” he said.

People keep asking how he and his family are doing, but Toney keeps saying that he does not know.

He says that even though the shooting set his own psychological triggers, he can’t go down that route and let himself “be bad for everybody.”

When he realized his daughter was shot, he thought his “old lifestyle had caught up” to him,

Toney said, adding that a piece of the wall hit his shoulder, causing “a flashback” and he believed he might have been shot.

Lovely gets her name from the suggestion of an inspirational person Toney met in prison when he was serving time related to drugs, he said.

At the time, Toney had said that if he ever had a daughter, he would name her Lovely.

“And Lovely, boy, she's definitely a handful,” he said of the energetic child.

She is making a “great” recovery and is in stable condition at Cohen’s Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, Toney said. The child had three surgeries on Friday to repair the damage done by bullets, as well as a fractured hand, and her prognosis is good.

Her liver is expected to heal on its own, and no other organs or her spine were damaged; there are no bullet fragments in her.

Lovely has surprised the doctors, according to Toney.

"She's a fighter," he said.

Though she is still intubated, she was able to breathe well on her own, Toney said, adding that the machine picks up for her when she is too weak.

She has opened her eyes and indicated she wanted to be held by her dad the other day, and he had to leave so that she would calm down.

Toney said, “‘You need to rest, baby girl.’”

Because she is so energetic, he imagines her recovery must be hard.

“She’s a little, bouncy girl,” he said. “When she gets a little bit of energy, she's not going to sit.”

As Lovely has been becoming more aware of her surroundings, she has been pulling bows out of her hair.

She hates the hair adornments, so when Toney saw that he said, “Lovely’s back when she doesn’t like bow-bows.”

She has a long road to recovery in front of her that will include multiple therapies, her cousin, Catherine Bright said.

Lovely’s mother has also taken time off of work to be with her and it is unclear when she will be able to return. Thankfully, the Ronald McDonald Foundation has provided the family with a hotel room at a hotel near the hospital so that they can be close to Lovely as she makes her recovery.

So Bright began a GoFundMe page to help them in their time of need. So far, it has raised $1,715 toward a $10,000 goal.

Toney is still coming to grasp what has happened.

“It's an unspeakable situation,” he said. “I really don't even know how to explain the full gravity. I haven’t even cried; I haven’t shed a tear.”