MOULTRIE, Ga. — A Colquitt County man died after being struck in the head by celebratory gunfire less than 30 minutes into 2017.

Alonzo Cortez was with a gathering of friends toasting in the new year at a party at his 124 Yates Lane residence when a bullet struck his head on its way down.

That act of celebration, a practice that goes on over much of the world to bring in the new year, proved to be tragic for 22-year-old.

 Cortez was taken by air to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital and was pronounced dead at 5:11 p.m. on Monday   after life-support was removed.

“Witnesses said he just fell over, bleeding from the head,” Colquitt County Sheriff’s Office Inv. Chris Robinson said.

No one in his group was firing weapons, he said. There were a great many people firing guns along with fireworks popping well into the morning as officers were at the scene.

The bullet struck Cortez at about 12:15 a.m. Sunday.

“They were just standing there,” Robinson said. “We have no idea where it came from or what caliber.”

The bullet could have been fired from a great distance — even several miles — from Yates Lane, he said.

“Deputies, along with some of the Drug Enforcement Team, (searched) the area,” Robinson said. They heard plenty of gunfire still going on while they were working.

A pathologist with the Florida Medical Examiner’s office in Tallahassee will perform an autopsy.

“This is a lesson about firing in the air,” Robinson said.

For some in the county some holidays — the biggest being New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July — are an occasion to fire weapons into the air. The fatal shot here was not the only tragic incident that occurred at U.S. homes.

In Louisville, Ky., 2-year-old Cameron Eli Compton was struck by a stray bullet at about 10:42 p.m. Saturday, KCTV News reported. The toddler survived.

A 5-year-old north Alabama girl was not so fortunate as she died after a man reportedly fired several rounds from a gun into the ground shortly after midnight. The girl was shot at about 12:06 a.m. Sunday in Athens when she walked into the line of fire of a 34-year-old man who has been charged with criminally negligent homicide, according to The News Courier.

The country as a whole has an average of about two deaths and 25 injuries as a result of celebratory firing into the air each New Year’s Eve, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.