NEWPORT — Three months after birdshot fired from the apartment below lodged in her right leg while she slept on her bedroom floor, 3-year-old Lennox Martioski has made a nearly complete recovery.
“She has not skipped a beat. She really hasn’t,” said her mother, Cynthia Belrose, while Lennox sat next to her on a couch in their Laurel Street apartment recently. “I’m so impressed with her. She walks just perfectly fine.”
Smiling but shy at first, Lennox soon feels comfortable showing a reporter her stuffed bird and the crayons she received from her older sister.
While overjoyed with their daughter’s recovery, Lennox’s father, John Martioski, and Belrose, who are engaged, said the terrifying experience of the shooting still haunts them with dreadful thoughts of what might have happened.
“It is just recurring nightmares of that night,” Martioski said. “For me, I wake up having nightmares that I walked in and picked up a lifeless body. It was the scariest thing we have ever been through.”
Added Cynthia: “You don’t expect to go to bed and be woken up by that.”
Then there is the physical reminder in their daughter’s bedroom: a ceiling pockmarked from the debris and a small hole where the birdshot ripped through the wooden floor and hit the inside of Lennonx’s right knee.
Tim Hale, 51, the downstairs neighbor, was charged in the incident and has pleaded not guilty to second-degree assault and reckless conduct with a deadly weapon after police alleged he fired his 12-gauge shotgun into the ceiling. His next court appearance is scheduled for early September with a trial tentatively scheduled for October,” Assistant County Attorney Justin Hersh said. He has pleaded not guilty.
The incident happened late on a Sunday night in mid-April. Martioski was home with Lennox, who was playing on her bedroom floor and watching television, not ready climb into bed. He decided to let her stay there until Belrose came home around 11.
The couple was watching TV and were about to put Lennox in her bed when they suddenly heard “a big clap that sounded like a window falling,” Martioski said.
They raced into the room and first noticed a lot of debris and dust before Belrose lifted the blanket covering her daughter, who was awake but not crying.
“She picks up the blankets, looks at the baby, screams and runs away,” with Lennox in her arms, Martioski said, adding he initially didn’t realize the cause for her alarm.
They quickly put a tourniquet on the wound and called 911. Amid the panic, there was a knock at the door. They opened it up to see Hale standing there.
” ‘I’m sorry it was an accident,’ ” Belrose said he told them. “When he came to the door and said that, it took five seconds for me to put two and two together and what caused the damage to her. It shocked me what he said.”
When police arrived, Hale surrendered and immediately told police where the gun was, according to a police affidavit, which also said Hale told police he consumed a six-pack of beer earlier in the evening.
Lennox underwent five hours of surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center while her parents waited anxiously.
“They were prepping us in the ER telling us at the very worst, she could lose her leg,” Martioski said.
He said that prognosis, while not the best, brought some sense of relief knowing their daughter would live.
“She did an amazing job,” Belrose said of the surgery. “She is a real trouper.”
Lennox returned home after four days in the hospital.
Belrose and Martioski said they do not harbor anger toward Hale, who has returned to his apartment below them.
“We just want to focus on our daughter,” Martioski said.
When Hale sought an amendment to his bail conditions that would allow him to return home after moving in with a relative in Georges Mills after his first court appearance, Martioski and Belrose agreed without concern, though a “no contact” order and prohibition against possessing firearms or consuming alcohol remain in effect for Hale.
“We know the guy and he is not a bad guy,” Belrose said. “He brought her cookies that morning (of the shooting). He just made a stupid decision, and we hope it changes him for the better.”
Lennox had a cast removed about two weeks ago, and a long scar from the surgery remains the only visible evidence of the accident. Belrose said there is some concern with elevated lead levels in her blood, which may be the result of a decision to leave one of the birdshots, which measure almost three-quarters of an inch in diameter, in her leg, though Belrose said that is not certain. Otherwise, Lennox continues to improve.
“She got lucky that night,” Belrose said. “God was definitely with her.”
The shooting of the little girl was one of at least four incidents involving firearms in Newport, which is home to about 6,500 residents, since December.
A father and son from Goshen, N.H., were arrested in December after the son allegedly shot two people on Oak Street in Newport during a drug sale transaction, police said. They have pleaded not guilty. In addition. a 77-year-old Newport man who suffers from dementia allegedly shot and killed his 75-year-old wife this spring, but isn’t being charged because of his health and cognitive conditions, authorities said.
An 80-year-old Newport man is also facing charges after he allegedly fired a handgun at his caregiver this month. He has pleaded not guilty; nobody was injured.
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
