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.