Parents of Boston student shot in Florida seek answers

HAVERHILL, Mass. -- After Timothy Englehardt was shot in the head in September, his parents were told it was a suicide.

But Bill and Therese Englehardt couldn't believe it, reports CBS Boston. Their 22-year-old was son was wrapping up his studies at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida and planning to return to Massachusetts, where he grew up, to pursue his dream of being a TV meteorologist.

The would-be weatherman was lining up job interviews for after graduation, his parents said. Just moments before the shooting, in Holly Hill, Fla., he called his grandmother to ask for a plane ticket back to Boston this Thanksgiving.

"I don't know why people thought it was a suicide," says Bill Englehardt in an interview with CBS Boston. "Tim had everything in the world going for him. He never ever would have committed suicide, it wasn't in his nature."

Englehardt's concerns were validated when police told him they now consider the death suspicious.

In 911 tapes obtained by CBS Boston, you can hear Tim's friends calling for help immediately after the shooting on the evening of September 13th.

"My friend shot himself. We think he's dead... he shot himself," says the caller.

Then, in the background, another person can be heard saying, "I did it."

"No you didn't," the caller says. "Relax, you didn't kill him."

His family is relieved to know detectives are still working the case. Police in Florida say the gun used in the incident was found out of reach of Tim's body.

"I believe it was accidental, but a murder's a murder," Bill Englehardt says.

"I just constantly lie awake at night, thinking of my son being shot in the head," he says. "It's just the nightmare that never ends."