Just a few moments into the New Year, Javier Suarez Rivera stood in his driveway with his wife to watch fireworks burst in the night sky, listening to their pops mingled with the sounds of unseen neighbors shooting guns into the air.

As he looked up, a bullet came down.

Rivera collapsed, falling backward onto the concrete, blood pouring from a wound to his head. Inside his house, 18 family members, who had been sharing midnight hugs and handshakes, heard his wife's screams for someone to call 911.

They fumbled as they searched their pockets for phones, followed the operator's directions for chest compressions and watched as a CPR-certified neighbor took over efforts to revive Rivera.

As the wails of an approaching ambulance's siren grew louder, the racket of New Year revelry slowed, then stopped. The sky was dark when paramedics declared Rivera dead.

"It was just quiet," said Charles Cain, Rivera's brother-in-law.

Police strongly suspect Rivera, a 43-year-old welder and manager, was struck by a falling bullet from celebratory gunfire, although the medical examiner must still confirm it. The shot could have been fired up to a mile away from his four-bedroom home on a neat residential street two blocks from A.B. Freeman Elementary off Edgebrook and Theta.

Unfortunately, deaths like Rivera's are not rare. Years of injuries and fatalities from gunfire and fireworks stand as a grim reminder that some continue to ignore the pleadings of police across the nation to celebrate holidays - the Fourth of July, Christmas, New Year's - safely.

Early on Jan. 1, 1997, a Harris County man's handgun jammed and then accidentally discharged, killing his 7-year-old daughter. That same night, another Houston man was killed by celebratory gunfire. Two years later, a random bullet hit the shoulder of a pregnant woman watching fireworks downtown.

Others shot same night

The same night Rivera died, stray bullets pierced the leg of a Tampa, Fla., woman waiting for a fireworks display, sliced through the ceiling of an Atlanta home to lodge in a woman's leg, cut through a wall to graze a St. Louis man, and fell through the roof into a New York bedroom, according to media reports.

"It's very dangerous to go outside and discharge a firearm in the air," said HPD spokesman Victor Senties. "What goes up must come down and usually does so with greater force."

A 1994 study at a Los Angeles hospital found that 32 percent of people hit by falling bullets died, compared to 6 percent of all gunshot victims. The higher mortality rate can be attributed to the simple fact that 77 percent of falling bullets hit their victims in the head, while deliberate gunshots were more likely to hit their bodies.

Of the 118 falling bullet episodes in the study, police were able to track six bullets to their source. Rivera's neighbors and family told police they did not see anyone on their street shooting fireworks or guns.

Investigators are encouraging anyone in the area who heard or saw gunfire to call police or CrimeStoppers.

Los Angeles banned firing celebratory shots into the sky during the seven-year study. Later, its city council banned the sale of ammunition leading up to New Year's Day. Other cities have passed similar ordinances.

Houston has no such rules, but state law prohibits celebratory gunfire in cities with a population greater than 100,000. The Class A misdemeanor is punishable by a $4,000 fine and up to a year in jail

Shooters might also be charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony, if someone is hurt. The fine can be as high as $10,000 and includes a prison sentence of two to 10 years.

While a handful of people have been convicted of the misdemeanor in cases without victims, justice has been elusive for people hit by stray bullets. Houston grand juries have declined to indict shooters in two deaths from celebratory gunfire, the only cases where a shooter was identified, according to 20 years of Chronicle archives.

Family seeks answers

Senties said Houston police do not treat celebratory gunfire differently from the thousands of calls they receive each year from people seeing or hearing gunshots. He declined to discuss what methods police might use to connect a bullet found in a victim to the gun it came from.

On Thursday, while most of their neighbors nursed hangovers or gathered with loved ones to share the first meal of the new year, Rivera's family grieved and pleaded for anyone who might know who fired a gun into the air to come forward. More urgently, they asked people to stop doing it.

"Don't have guns at New Year's," said Cain, Rivera's brother-in-law. "Enjoy it with friends and family."

Victim recalled as kind

A single, celebratory gunshot into the air means Cain no longer will be able to walk down the street to have coffee with his brother-in-law. His children will graduate from Austin High School as he did, but he won't be there to see it. When the extended family gathers for the fall festival at the neighborhood church, they'll no longer have him on their team for human foosball.

Gabriel Barrera, who used to live across the street, remembered Rivera as a kind man who adored his family and took pride in repairs he was making to the home he had moved into about a year earlier. Barrera was visiting his parents on the same block Thursday morning when he heard about the stray bullet that killed Rivera.

Standing in the rain, Barrera offered condolences to Cain and looked back at his parents' front yard, where his children often run about and play.

"We usually spend New Year's Eve here," Barrera said. "It could have happened to any of us."

Reporter Katherine Driessen contributed to this report.