5-month-old girl fatally shot in car in Chicago, police say

A 5-month-old girl was shot to death while in the rear of a car in a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, authorities said.

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

Cecilia was taken to a hospital, where she later died.

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

No arrests have been made.

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

As of June 19, the Chicago Police Department had recorded 282 homicides this year, down from 316 during the same period in 2021. Like other U.S. cities, Chicago reported a drastic 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-century — eclipsed Los Angeles’ tally by 400 and New York’s by nearly 300.

Crisis responder Andrew Holmes, who spoke with Cecilia’s mother, expressed anger at the shooter, saying, “You shouldn’t sleep at night,” and urged the person to surrender to police.

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

Local activist Ja’Mal Green offered a $5,000 reward for information about the shooting.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.