Circumstances of young man's injury remain shrouded in mystery

Honza Ripa remembers everything that happened last June 13 at Eagle Rock, an out-of-the-way beach on the back side of Healdsburg's Fitch Mountain.

But he never felt the impact that broke his neck and paralyzed most of his body.

What happened is "one of those things we'll never know," said Honza, 18.

He was at the Russian River beach with friends on a scorching Saturday afternoon just two weeks after graduation from Healdsburg High School.

Honza, a wrestler and star golfer, had done a backflip off Eagle Rock, where the placid green water drops from knee-high depths to 14 feet, and swum to shore.

Then he was standing in water almost waist deep and dove in, both arms out in front of him. He tried to move his right arm and couldn't.

He was face down in the water and couldn't move.

"I remember chugging water," he said.

Honza heard a friend say that he was "just messing around."

He would have drowned but for friends pulling him out of the river, then calling for help.

Two vertebrae in his neck, known as C4 and C5, were fractured. It took nine hours of surgery the following day at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to repair the bones, now fused together with metal plates and screws.

Damage to Honza's spinal cord paralyzed him below the neck, and he has since regained marginal use of his arms, just enough to operate a motorized wheelchair.

There were no scratches or bruises on Honza's body.

No one knows how he got hurt.