I knew all of the kids involved in this case through high school. Christian was not a saint. He had threatened several times to commit suicide.
In this case, you have Bilbo Mitchell who was the main DA. His son Hayes was running with this group of kids.
From what I’ve heard, it’s more plausible that they caught Christian trying to hurt himself, struggled with him, then the gun goes off. A group of young kids then says “oh crap, it’s gonna look like we killed him.” So they do some moving things around and make a few phone calls to daddy to do whatever he can to keep them out of it.
Either way, it’s still suicide, it’s just not the whole story. The mother is going to believe it’s murder either way though. The fact is that it was suicide, whether purposefully or accidental. That’s not part of the cover up. They just aren’t telling all the details to protect what would become a huge mess with one side calling for death penalty when someone was just trying to stop him from actually committing suicide.
Also, Bilbo Mitchell’s son Hayes did pass away from a drug overdose not long after all this went down. Some say it’s because of the guilt he felt from how all of that went down. That’s just the rumor I’ve heard in talking to people that have investigated it.