This has been really bugging me. I do not think that Tom actually just decided to run away while at work the day he died. "They shot him." said Atticus. "He was running......They said he just broke out into a blind raving chrage at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front of them-" ......the guards called him to stop. They fired a few shots in the air, then to kill him.....Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoot him that much." It seems to me that maybe the guards at his work were threatning to kim him since the goverment won't, at least for a while. They may have wanted justice then and there so they said that hey we are going to kill you today, but if you run we might miss. I mean the guy had seventeen bullet holes in him that is a little too much. Two would have done the trick. So that is why I think that Tom was murdered and that his death was NOT a accident.