Published April 11, 2011

You surely remember the strange story: a mangled body was found in November on a quiet residential street in Milton, perplexing police.

Eventually, what was suspected yet scoffed at became the likely story. Officials say Delvonte Tisdale stowed away in the wheel well of an airplane and died either in-flight or by plunging back to earth when the plane deployed its landing gear.

What we still don’t know is why he was there. Tisdale was just 16 when he died. He was living in Charlotte, N.C., with his dad and was an ROTC student.

This weekend, Tommy Tomlinson, a columnist for the Charlotte Observer, dug into who Tisdale was, but still can’t understand how he ended up dead in Milton. In “The boy who fell out of the sky,” Tomlinson writes:

Arrange the facts a certain way, piece the jagged edges together, and you start to see a picture. But the picture doesn’t speak. Nothing in it says why.

Authorities are still investigating Tisdale’s death, but it seems we may never know the full story.