A teenager shot a two-year-old girl in the face in ‘revenge’ for her relative insulting him after he stole her phone.

The horrific events unfolded in Cordoba, Argentina, on Friday night (9th December) when the 16-year-old boy robbed a woman for her mobile phone on the street, just yards from her family home.

The teenage crook fled but returned with four adults a short while later because the victim and her family had ‘insulted’ him after he had robbed her, witnesses reported.

Three of the group were armed.

The gunmen then sprayed the woman’s home with bullets.

Little Franchesca Avila, aged just two, was at her grandmother’s home at the time and was hit in the cheekbone by a bullet.

The injured toddler was taken to a local children’s hospital in a critical condition and died from hypovolaemic shock shortly after admission.

Her body was later autopsied and then returned to her devastated family, who are now demanding justice from authorities.

The teenage suspect was arrested by police for aggravated murder and will face trial in a juvenile court.

Investigating prosecutor Ernesto de Aragon told local media: “He returned accompanied by other adults to shoot up the house.”

According to witnesses, he said, “the perpetrator of the shot that hit the girl was the minor”.

He added that “the shot was not deliberately aimed at the minor” but that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Investigators are now working to identify the other four individuals who were part of his group.

The girl’s paternal grandmother, Nancy, told local media that her son, Franchesca’s father, is “destroyed and inconsolable”.