New Year brings tragedy to Ruskin family

Diego Duran Sr. said his 12-year-old son Diego is like any other active little boy.

“About this time of the day he's usually going back and forth on the ramp,” Duran said Sunday afternoon. “Right now he's not doing that.”

The young man isn't playing on his skateboard ramp because he's currently at Tampa General Hospital, fighting for his life.

Investigators say Diego was out in the front yard of his home celebrating the New Year early Sunday morning when a freak accident occurred.

“He dropped,” Duran Sr. recalled. “I'm still cleaning freaking blood off the car, man.”

The boy had been shot in the top of the head, the apparent victim of a stray bullet.

Investigators believe someone celebrating the New Year shot their gun in the air, and that bullet came down and hit Diego.

A day later, his father is in obvious pain.

“He was standing right there, man,” the elder Diego said fighting back tears.

Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office detectives say interviews with witnesses in the area at the time have turned up nothing. Nobody in the immediate vicinity of the Duran residence fired a weapon into the air.

They say the shooter could have been miles away, but not far enough for a family who spent the first night of 2012 in the hospital.

“He didn't deserve that,” his dad says.

In the state of Florida it is against the law to fire a gun in the air on holidays to celebrate.