Someone in Diego Duran's neighborhood fired a celebratory bullet in the air in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2012 and changed Diego's life forever when the bullet landed in the boy's skull.
The Apollo Beach teen's shocking ordeal made national headlines as he slowly recovered in the intensive care unit at Tampa General Hospital.
"We were looking up at the fireworks in the sky and then I just collapsed," Diego recounted as he spoke publicly for the first time Saturday. The road to speaking out Saturday was not easy after "a tingling feeling through my whole body" changed Diego's life.
Since January, Diego made tremendous progress, returning to school and gradually getting back to a normal routine. Now a well-known name in the Tampa Bay area, a section of a new 11,000 square foot skate park in his hometown was named in his honor -- the "Diego Duran Skateboard Plaza" at Apollo Beach Skatepark.
Hillsborough County commissioners voted to name the skatepark for Diego because skateboarding is one of his favorite pastimes.
"If I could, I would be skating right here, right now," Diego said; he can't skateboard for now because of health reasons stemming from his injuries.
His family said the skatepark is proof that good can come out of bad situations. It's a feeling that comes as part of the campaign by Diego and his family called "Bullet Free Sky".
"We want to educate everyone," Diego's mother Sandra Duran said, "because we don't feel we were educated enough. We did not know how far a bullet travels. And we want to spread the word and want to ask everyone to spread the word, as well, to prevent this from happening to someone else."
The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office canvassed the neighborhood and area around the incident, but the person who fired the bullet has never been found.