This incident reminded me of what happened to the kid who's dad lived across the street from us a few years ago. His mom and dad were divorced and he split time living with the two of them. He was the same age as my son and they were really good friends during high school. He was an excellent athlete and played multiple sports.
However, he started running with the "wrong" crowd, as the old story goes, and it wasn't long before he got into drugs. He started getting into so much trouble that he was kicked off the wrestling team and ended up going to a different school so he could wrestle there.
After he graduated from high school, he really went off the deep end. Within 2 years of graduating, he was dead. It's unsure exactly what happened leading up to his death due to conflicting stories told by those that were present, but the gist of it is that all present were stoned out of their minds and he got into a big way of talking about how tough he was and that he was invincible. One thing lead to another, and this is where the stories diverge, he either put a gun in his mouth to "prove" how tough he was or he challenged someone else to shoot him. Needless to say, it didn't have the outcome he had envisioned in his drug induced state of mind. What was so bad is that, according to what we understand, he lay there dead for several hours before anyone realized he was dead and had the where-with-all to call anyone.
His dad has since moved so I don't know if they ever really resolved exactly what happened. I do know that no one was ever charged with killing him, so I guess that means it was pretty much ruled a suicide.