RIDGE, NEW YORK: A three-year-old girl named Lovely Toney was wounded by a stray bullet when a murder suspect Gary Jones opened fire on detectives and then fatally shot himself in Long Island on Tuesday night, police said.
Lovely was standing on the couch in her home when she was hit by one of the bullets that pierced the wall from the next apartment where the suspect was hiding, her father James Toney told CBS New York.
The bullet went through the wall and struck Lovely Toney
“I was just feeding my kids, putting my daughter through her ritual, her nightly bath. Heard what sounded like fireworks. I turned around, and I see my daughter bleeding,” he said.
“I didn’t know how to react. I’ve never been through it before. My daughter was even shocked, she just stood there, she didn’t even cry,” he said.
“I just learned that it went through her hand… In and out her stomach.”
The girl was rushed to a local hospital by police officers who performed life-saving measures to control the bleeding, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said during a press conference.
Toney said his daughter underwent surgery and is soon expected to make a full recovery. “It’s definitely something tragic, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” he said.
How did the shooting happen?
The shooting took place at around 8.30 pm when Suffolk County Police Homicide detectives went to a townhouse complex on Ticonderoga Court in Ridge to investigate a murder that happened in June in Central Islip, authorities said.
The detectives were interviewing a friend of the suspect, 38-year-old Gary Jones, of North Amityville, who informed them that Jones was in the house.
Jones then came out of a room armed with a handgun and fired multiple shots at the detectives who retreated from the house.
Who was Gary Jones?
Jones was wanted for the murder of his girlfriend who was shot to death in June, Harrison said.
He had several prior arrests for robbery, drug possession and grand larceny auto, he added.
Harrison said investigators recovered a 9mm handgun from Jones, believed to be the same calibre weapon used in his girlfriend’s death.
After Jones fired shots at the detectives, police surrounded the house and called for hostage negotiators and the Emergency Services Unit, authorities said.
Emergency Services officers then sent a robot into the home and found Jones dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
No officers fired their weapons at any point during the incident, it was said. The investigation is ongoing.
