DeLAND, Fla. – A 42-year-old woman sitting outdoors at a DeLand live music establishment was struck by a mystery bullet, which wasn't discovered in her leg for four days.
"If it comes up, it must come down," Heather Charlebois said.
But Charlebois never expected that it would be a .38-caliber bullet that got lodged in her leg.
"We heard a loud pop and I felt a lot of pain in my leg, so we assumed it was a firecracker. We never figured it was a gunshot," she said.
Charlebois and her friends were in the courtyard of Cafe DaVinci celebrating the Fourth of July when it happened.
"Suddenly it felt like something blew up in my lap," she said.
Surveillance video shows the group sitting around the table. A man looks up in the air and then Charlebois stands up and limps away with a dark mark on her leg.
"I went to the bathroom and looked at my leg and that's when it started bleeding. It bled for the first couple days," said Charlebois.
Investigators say the bullet was fired in the air from a surrounding area and happened to land in the courtyard.
Charlebois said four days later she finally posted a picture on Facebook. When her friends told her it looked like a bullet hole, she went to the hospital. Doctors took X-rays and it showed the bullet still intact, but she said they didn't want to remove it.
"They said it's because it's so close to the femoral artery they didn't want to take a chance of doing more damage," Charlebois said. "I'm going to get a second, maybe third opinion from other surgeons because I don't want it left in me."
Charlebois said her leg still burns from the bullet but that she is trying to take everything in stride.
"It's kind of surreal and cool and not cool, and it made me mad and it made me laugh," she said
A search of the courtyard failed to find any bullet fragments related to the shooting.
The DeLand Police Department said it's working to identify the source of the gunshot.
"We ask that anyone that may have seen or heard anything that could be related to this incident call Crime Stoppers at 888-277-8477," DeLand police said in a statement.
Watch Local 6 News and stay with ClickOrlando.com for more on this story.