The Kissimmee community started 2025 with a heavy heart after one of their own was murdered in her home — apparently by a stray bullet fired to ring in the new year.
Police said in a news release Wednesday that they believed Carmen Rosa Neira Ochoa, 56, was struck by a bullet from celebratory gunfire. Such needless tragedies occur every year, with this year also seeing celebratory gunfire blamed for the murder of a 10-year-old girl in Miami-Dade County.
Neira Ochoa’s son-in-law, Alex Marquez, described WESH’s grandmother as the matriarch of the family.
“She was a hard-working mother, very caring,” Marquez said. “She went out of her way to help anyone who was in need. She was all about her family. She would do anything to protect her family, even me.”
Around 11:50 p.m. Tuesday, Marquez told the station that he and his wife had just dropped Carmen off at her Gull Court home after dinner.
“Not even 5, 6, 7 minutes later, probably at twelve o’clock at night, I get a call from my sister-in-law that my mother-in-law has been shot,” he said.
The crime scene tape at Neira Ochoa’s home in the Buenaventura Lakes area of Osceola County was gone Thursday morning and neighbors could see her red door lined with small potted plants.
But some residents in the Flamingo Lakes neighborhood are concerned, saying this “should never have happened.”
Martha Villacorta, 60, lives two doors down from Neira Ochoa and often waved as the two walked along the cul-de-sac.
Villacorta said it has been peaceful during the 15 years she has lived in the Buenaventura Lakes area, home to more than 26,000 residents, the majority of whom are descendants of Puerto Rico, according to the most recent census data.
She was home at the time of the incident but was not feeling well and said she had not heard anything.
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“But then I saw a lot of police walking around and I said, ‘Oh God’ … and I mean, I was a little scared because this has never happened before,” she said. “People should start thinking about others because look what happened to this lady… you never expect something like this to happen.”
Ahead of each new year, law enforcement agencies routinely remind people to celebrate responsibly — not by firing gunshots into the air, as the bullets eventually come down and can cause injury or death. But reports of celebratory gunfire continue – often with disastrous consequences.
At least 11 people across the country have been accidentally shot during New Year’s celebrations this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The only other incident reported in Florida was the Miami-Dade County shooting of the 10-year-old girl, who was killed after being hit in the head by a stray bullet while setting off fireworks outside with her family their apartment.
The year before, there were nearly two dozen reports of injuries from accidental gunfire, at least a dozen from gunfire in 2024. Neira Ochoa and the Miami-Dade child, identified as Yanelis Munuguia, are the only documented accidental deaths to date after this year’s celebration, according to the archive.
“This heartbreaking incident serves as a devastating reminder that what goes up, must come down,” the group said in a post on X. “Bullets fired into the air can take innocent lives.”
