A 6-year-old girl was killed in a D.C. shooting that also injured five adults Friday night, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. 

The shooting happened around 11 p.m. near the intersection of Malcolm X Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., said Ashan M. Benedict, the department’s executive assistant chief of police. 

Police said the young girl, who officials have not yet identified, was pronounced dead at a hospital. 

“There’s too much gun violence still perpetuating this city and too many children are being harmed. Innocent children,” Benedict said in a video posted online where he also asked the public for information about the shooting. 

The adults injured in the violence — three men and two women — were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries, he said. 

Officers from the Seventh District station responded to the shooting after hearing gunfire, according to Benedict. 

Police did not provide details about what may have motivated the shooting. The department said on Twitter it was looking for a dark-color vehicle.

Nearly 200 people died from homicides in the District last year, the highest count in 15 years. Most of the people who were killed were Black men who lived in some of the city’s highest poverty neighborhoods.

The pace of violence has not relented in 2021. 

As of early Friday, police recorded 101 homicides in the District this year, the exact number at the same point last year. The spike mirrors trends in other major U.S. cities as violent crime has surged during the pandemic. 

Earlier this year, D.C. Councilmember Trayon White urged city officials to declare a state of emergency after three teenagers were fatally shot in Ward 8, which he represents. A month later, Mayor Muriel Bowser issued an order declaring gun violence a public health crisis and pledged $15 million to an effort focused on reducing violence in specific neighborhoods. 

Bowser also appointed Linda Harllee Harper as D.C.’s director of gun violence and prevention, a new position focused on curbing the spate of shootings.