When Alexandria Johnson arrived at a trauma room at Princess Margaret Hospital on Thursday evening, she found her two-year-old daughter, D’Lani Smith, fitted with a neck brace, covered in blood with a bullet lodged in her head.

She went by her daughter’s side, rubbed her hand and called her name.

“She opened her eyes and then she closed them back,” said Johnson between sobs yesterday.

“I said, ‘D’Lani, this is mummy.’ When she opened her eyes, the first thing my baby, my two-year-old baby, said to me was, ‘Mommy, my daddy dead.’ That killed me.”

Johnson broke down in tears.

She continued, “The first thing my two-year-old said is, ‘He’s dead. Mommy, my daddy’s dead.’ And I said, ‘No, baby. Don’t say that.’ I had no idea her daddy was dead. I didn’t know anything. She was the one to tell me that her daddy was dead.

“I said, ‘No, baby, don’t say that. Please don’t say that.’ And she just closed her eyes back and she continued to cry and they took me out the room because they wanted to start the procedure on her head.” 

D’Lani was one of eight people shot at the intersection of Jerome Avenue and Chesapeake Road on Thursday.

Six men, including D’Lani’s father, Delano Smith, were killed after four men, dressed in black, exited a white Kia Sportage and opened fire on them.

Two of the suspects were armed with high-powered assault rifles; the other two were armed with calibrated pistols, police reported.

The incident occurred not long after Smith, who had just been released from the Central Detective Unit (CDU) and was accompanied by his girlfriend, came to pick D’Lani up, according to Johnson, who was at work at the time of the shooting.

She said Smith told her teenage daughter that he wanted to take D’Lani for ice cream.

“From what I understand from her, from the girlfriend, she said he left his phone at CDU,” Johnson said.

“He went back to CDU and at the same time, those other guys were being released and they asked for a ride because they were all from the same neighborhood and that’s what happened when they ended up heading back home. Given her account of what happened, she said that when the shots started, he covered D’Lani.

“So, he took most of the shots to his back. One came through the back of his head and out of his mouth and we believe that’s the one that rested to the top of her skull. His body slowed down that bullet. That’s what saved my baby because that bullet just sat in her skull. He saved his daughter and she said he had enough breath to say to D’Lani, ‘Daddy loves you.’

“Then, he threw my daughter in her (the girlfriend’s) arms and told her to run and she ran and those savages still shot at her. That’s how she ended up falling on the side of the road with my baby in her hands.

“With his last, he made sure to protect our baby and these people trying to make him seem as if he’s some kind of animal or gangbanger. He’s not. These were his friends. They were all from the same neighborhood. He knew these people. Just because you [are] from a certain area, people would just label you.

“Until the end, he was a father. He was a good father. If it wasn’t for him, my baby wouldn’t have been here. That man protected my baby. He lost his life for our baby and with his last breath, he tried his best to make sure she was good because he told his girlfriend to run and he gave her our baby and he told her to run.”

‘God and angels protected her’

Johnson said she found out about the shooting from her teenage daughter.

She said her daughter told her that Smith had just picked up D’Lani “and if I could please go and check and make sure she was OK”. 

“She made it seem like it was in his neighborhood where he was living,” Johnson said.

“When I was almost there, someone called me and said, ‘Hey. Is it true that Ginger’s vehicle was shot up on Jerome Avenue?’ So, I ended up driving to Jerome Avenue.”

When asked what was going through her mind when she arrived at the scene, she replied, “Well, my only concern was, I just kept asking the officer, ‘Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby?’ I had no idea what took place, what was going on. I just wanted to know where my baby was.

“He told me she was transported in the ambulance and I just left right away and went straight to the hospital.”

Johnson said the doctors briefed her on D’Lani’s condition when she arrived at the hospital.

She said they told her that they performed a chest X-ray, which revealed that “everything was fine with her chest”.

“I can’t even tell you the feeling,” said Johnson when asked how it felt learning that her daughter will survive. 

“When I first arrived, I just kept asking them, ‘I just need you to tell me that she’s OK’ because that was the only thing I really wanted to know — that she was OK and that she was alive.

“At first, they were really hesitant and then this nurse came and said, ‘Miss, I just want you to know whatever it was, it was just God and angels that had your baby. It was God and angels that had your baby.’ When she said that, I knew that she was alive.”

Stable

Johnson said D’Lani is “fine” following the shooting.

“She’s up,” she said.

“She’s speaking. She’s communicating. What happened was that the bullet hit her skull and fractured it. It didn’t go through. It basically sat there. There were fragments that were scattered on her brain but the doctor advised me that it wouldn’t be good to operate because it might cause more damage.

“So, what they did is they flushed it out and a few of the fragments came out, so it’s kind of looking on the positive side.”

The doctor advised her that D’Lani’s long-term effects may include seizures “but it will be treatable”, according to Johnson.

“So, right now, watching her, she’s had a few vomiting episodes, but they said that’s something that’s expected with a head injury,” she said.

“But, other than that, she’s alive.”

Police said Smith’s girlfriend was in stable condition yesterday.

Johnson told The Guardian that she saw her at the hospital after the shooting.

“When my baby was coming out of the CAT scan, she was going in,” she said.

“I barely glimpsed her on the trolley they were pushing her [on]. When I saw it was her, all I could do was just hug her and say, ‘Thank you. Thank you for saving my baby.’ 

“She said, ‘I had to. I had to make sure your baby was good. He told me to take care of her. I had to save her. I had to.’”

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