Man charged over 4-year-old girl's murder in New Mexico road rage attack

Lilly Garcia was shot in the head and later died in hospital

The FBI and Albuquerque Police Department addressed the media on Wednesday (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

A man has been charged with murder after a road-rage shooting in New Mexico led to the death of a four-year-old girl.

Lilly Garcia was shot in the head when a maroon or dark red Toyota pulled up beside her father’s pick-up truck and fired into the vehicle on the Interstate 40 in Albuquerque on Tuesday afternoon.

Lilly had been sitting in the back seat of the vehicle with her seven-year-old brother after their father had picked them up from school.

She later died in hospital.

Police arrested 32-year-old Tony Torrez on Wednesday.

In a statement on their Facebook page, Albuquerque Police Department said he had confessed to the murder.

Police said the Toyota had cut across traffic and forced Lilly’s father out of his lane.

“The two drivers exchanged words when Torrez pulled out a gun and shot at the red truck driven by Lilly’s father," the statement said.

"Lilly was hit at least once in the head."

An anonymous caller provided detectives with the suspect’s name, helping them to track Torrez down.

The arrest was made after police released a recording of a 911 call, in which a man was heard alerting the operator to the pickup truck which had stopped on the freeway. The caller also said a man appeared to be holding an unresponsive child.

Torrez was charged with multiple offences including murder, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and child abuse, according to the police.

Before the arrest, Gordon Eden Jr, chief of police at Albuquerque Police Department said: “I have never seen it before. I’ve seen tragic loss of children in car crashes.”

“To me, this is one of those crimes that is unexplainable. No way to explain your way out of this. We need to rise up as a community and say enough is enough,” he said, according to ABC News.

Rewards for information leading to an arrest amounted to more than $25,000.

Additional reporting by AP