WASHINGTON - A four year old girl was fatally shot in the head while riding in a car with her father in New Mexico in what authorities called a road rage attack, US media reported Thursday.
A suspect identified as Tony Torres, 32, has confessed to the shooting of Lilly Garcia on Tuesday afternoon in Albuquerque, ABC News reported.
An anonymous tip led to the arrest, city police chief Gorden Eden told a press conference late Wednesday, the network said. “She was so proud to tell people she just turned four,” the girl’s father Alan Garcia told ABC News. “She just started school two days ago. She was very bright and very smart,” he said. “She is my world.”
The father had picked up the girl and her 7-year-old brother from school Tuesday in a truck and started driving on an interstate highway. Some kind of road rage incident ensued, Eden said, according to another network, NBC News. “As the vehicles proceeded westbound on Interstate 40, shots were fired into the truck,” Eden said, according to NBC.
“The father, recognizing that he did in fact hear shots, saw that his daughter was bleeding, pulled to the edge of the road and tried to administer first aid.”
The suspect was arrested Wednesday. There is no indication that the shooter and the child’s father knew each other, Eden said.