Updating a story from last week, the mystery behind prep football star Billey Joe Johnson’s death only deepens. Johnson, you might recall, was killed after apparently sustaining a self-inflicted shotgun wound during a early morning traffic stop on December 8.

Since then, many people have tried to piece the story together, often with nothing more than hearsay, rumors, and idle speculation. Joining that fray is the NAACP, who announced that they do not believe Johnson’s death was a suicide:

The organization based its findings on interviews with people who knew Johnson and on physical evidence, Clark said, although Clark declined to detail the physical evidence, citing legal concerns. Clark said nothing supports the notion that the junior running back was in the state of mind to kill himself.

The NAACP can’t and won’t rule out an accidental self-shooting and plans to conduct a second, independent autopsy on Johnson next week. But that’s still an awfully bold statement.

With all due respect to the NAACP–whose motives in assisting this investigation are, in our eyes, unimpeachable–it’s going to take a lot more than conversations with family and friends to determine why that trigger was pulled. There are several questions that loom large, and pending the release of the District Attorney’s report, we’d probably need to know the answers to all of them before coming to any conclusions as to how or why the shooting took place.

1. Who is the registered owner of the shotgun?

This is a fairly obvious question; if the owner is someone other than a member of the Johnson household, then there are serious questions about why Johnson had it, and therefore how he might act when in the presence of law enforcement.

2. Is the shotgun usually in the car?

If that’s legal, then great. We’re not sure if it is. But the bigger question in this context is, is it usual or unusual? Why in the world a 17-year-old in rural Mississippi would need to drive around with a loaded, extremely deadly weapon is beyond us until some more facts about why the gun was in the car in the first place come out.

3. Was Johnson trained or experienced with such large firearms?

It’s much more likely that the shooting was accidental if Johnson had rarely or never operated the shotgun. Most 17-year-olds are not experienced shotgun.

4. Why was Johnson on that rural highway at 6:30 a.m.?

It’s very plausible, though not publicly confirmed, that that’s Johnson’s route to school and he goes to school early to work out or whatever. If that is not the case, then his behavior would be construed as quite out of the ordinary (especially with a freaking shotgun) and could lend some credence to the notion that he could commit suicide rather than deal with law enforcement.

5. What’s on the deputy’s dash camera?

We’re not residents of the state of Mississippi, but we can’t imagine that their police cruisers don’t have dash cameras. If they do, we ought to be able to see plenty of what transpired in the shooting itself. If we’re lucky, we’ll also get the audio of the deputy talking to his dispatcher as it happens (remember that Johnson allegedly shot himself while the deputy was running a license check in his vehicle). If there is insufficient (or somehow no) evidence from the police regarding what happened while Johnson was pulled over, then the final report from the DA plainly cannot be regarded as fact and the NAACP has every right to be skeptical. Heck, they don’t need an incomplete report for that.

As you can tell, there’s way too much about this case that’s still unkown and maybe (probably) unknowable. Again, when someone is shot to death with police at the scene, you want to have as many eyes and minds on the case as possible, so for that, a debt of gratitude to the NAACP. But for now, what we need most are answers, not proclamations.