Seven-year-old girl in bumblebee costume shot while trick-or-treating on Halloween

The girl remains in the hospital in critical condition

A seven year old girl was shot while trick-or-treating Chicago last night.

According to the Washington Post, the girl was struck in the lower neck with a stray bullet. The man thought to be the target of the shooting, a member of the Latin Kings gang, was walking near the girl on the street when the gunman fired at least seven shots in his direction.

“We heard the shots ... and I went outside,’’ Lali Lara, 25, who was working at a store near the scene, told the Chicago Tribune. “The girl’s father was screaming, ‘My little girl’s been shot!’ ”

An ambulance arrived five minutes later to transport the girl to hospital, where she remains in critical condition.

The target of the shooting is also in the hospital after being shot in the hand.

The gunman and another man fled the scene and the police have yet to make any arrests.

The shooting comes just days after Donald Trump’s first visit to the city as president. In his speech at the Chiefs of Police Annual Conference, Mr Trump said Chicago was “embarrassing to us as a nation” and said that Afghanistan was a “safer place”. Mr Trump made the same comparison while speaking about Baltimore at a campaign rally in Ohio in August.

Chicago’s police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, who boycotted Mr Trump’s speech, responded by pointing out that the national murder rate has declined over the past two years, as well as in Chicago.

As of 28 October, 2,313 people have been shot in Chicago, according to the Tribune, 223 fewer people than in 2018. The paper said that as of 26 October, 436 people had been killed in the city this year, 46 fewer than at the same stage in 2018.

A group of children in Halloween costumes close to the spot in Chicago where a seven-year-old girl was shot and seriously injured while trick-or-treating (AP)

According to The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on guns and gun violence, murder rates in large cities are generally higher than the national average. And though Chicago has received outsized attention thanks to Mr Trump’s remarks, it does not even rank in the top 10 of US cities with the highest homicide rates. St Louis, Baltimore, and Detroit were ranked as the most violent cities in the US in 2018.