Five-month-old girl shot dead in car in Chicago

25 June 2022, 21:14

Chicago police at the scene where a five-month-old girl was shot and killed in the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago
Chicago Violence Infant Slain. Picture: PA

Cecilia Thomas is among the youngest victims of gun violence in the city.

A five-month-old girl has been shot dead while in the back of a car in a neighbourhood in Chicago.

The infant, who was identified as Cecilia Thomas, was struck in the head on Friday evening when shots were fired from another vehicle in the South Shore neighbourhood in the city’s South Side, according to police and the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Cecilia was taken to hospital where she later died.

A 41-year-old man in another vehicle was in a good condition in hospital after suffering a gunshot wound near his eye, Chicago police said.

Chicago police at the scene where a five-month-old girl was shot and killed in the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago
Police at the scene where a five-month-old girl was shot and killed in the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

No arrests have been made.

The baby is among the youngest victims of gun violence in Chicago.

She would have turned six months old in four days, according to Natalia Derevyanny, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

As of Thursday, the Chicago Police Department had recorded 282 homicides so far this year, down from the 316 recorded during the same period in 2021.

Like many other cities in the US, Chicago reported a dramatic increase in homicides last year.

The 797 homicides in the nation’s third-largest city in 2021 – Chicago’s highest toll for any year in a quarter of a century – eclipsed Los Angeles’ tally by 400 and the total in New York by nearly 300.

Police at the scene where a five-month-old girl was shot and killed in the 7100 block of South Crandon Avenue, in the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago
Police at the scene in the 7100 block of South Crandon Avenue in the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago (Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

Crisis responder Andrew Holmes, who spoke with Cecilia’s mother, expressed anger at the gunman, saying “you shouldn’t sleep at night” and urged the person to turn themselves in.

“You just took this baby’s life. This baby was an infant, this baby didn’t do nothing to you,” he said.

Activist Ja’Mal Green offered a 5,000 dollar (£4,000) reward for information following the shooting.

By Press Association

Latest World News

See more Latest World News

American Easter egg

White House’s annual Easter egg roll to be attended by 40,000 people

Barbers in Paris

Proposal to ban discrimination over a person’s hair passes first legal hurdle

Mahmoud Abbas

Palestinian Authority names new government following pressure to reform

Arvind Kejriwal

Opposition leader Kejriwal locked up for further four days, court rules

Sam Bankman-Fried

FTX founder Bankman-Fried facing decades in prison for crypto fraud

Resident clears rubble from home

Russia wears down Ukrainian defences with missile and drone attacks

Pope Francis

Pope urges priests to avoid ‘clerical hypocrisy’ in Maundy Thursday speech

Wagner mercenaries

Wagner mercenaries helping to kill civilians in Mali, say human rights groups

Rescuers searching through rubble

Paramedics among 16 people killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon

Hairdressers in Paris

French legislators ponder law to ban discrimination based on a person’s hair

Australian products in Shanghai

China ends tariffs on Australian wine as relations between countries thaw

Soldiers in giant fuel tank

US military drains giant wartime fuel tanks which had poisoned water supply

Aiden Minnis (left) and Ben Stimson (right) joined the Russian military

British traitor fighting for Russia in Ukraine says he is 'prepared to die' for Putin after family 'disowns him'

Austria Navalny

Portraits of Alexei Navalny unveiled next to Soviet soldier monument in Vienna

Hawaii Wildfire

Hawaii fire survivors moving into housing but 3,000 still in hotels

Trump Investigations Eastman

Judge says former Trump lawyer should be debarred