Thanks, a couple of interesting things I found in the article that I had not known about. I think it was a hit, but the question remains: why?
•The next morning, Dec. 30, a neighbor looking after the Wheelers’ New Castle home noticed an open window and entered to find the house in disarray — chairs and plants tipped over, Wheeler’s West Point cadet sword lying unsheathed on the kitchen floor. It would have been unlike Wheeler to leave a mess, Klyce says, calling it “kind of strange.” But if it was a burglary, she adds, nothing was taken.
•Later that day, Wheeler was seen at a Wilmington office building, where he asked at least one person for a ride to Philadelphia. He looked like he had slept in his clothing but seemed coherent, witnesses said. That night, cameras at a nearby hotel captured him walking toward a rough neighborhood in a dark hooded sweatshirt, tugging the hood over his head. “It looked to me like he was trying to hide his face,” Klyce says. “It wasn’t his clothing.”
That she knows of.
And...
About 11:30 p.m. on Dec. 28, though, someone wearing a hooded sweatshirt, who a neighbor said matched Wheeler's husky description, lobbed smoke bombs onto the first floor of a home under construction across the street from his house.
Layman's view: a mental-illness situation could easily fit the evidence. If he was in possession of his faculties and just afraid, his behavior doesn't fit (e.g., why go to wrong garage). Pure speculation: he entered an abnormal mental state (such as a severe manic phase--depending on what meds he was on, it could have been a reaction from meds such as an antidepressant), and then in his last hours, antagonized someone in Newark who offed him and dumped him.
It's not as sexy as a hit, but it might very well be the truth. That doesn't diminish the tragedy.