Why does Sheriff Heck Tate describe Bob Ewell’s death as an accident?

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Book cover for To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, featuring a silhouette of a child under a tree and a large moon, with the title in script and — To Kill a Mockingbird This book cover is one of many given to Harper Lee's classic work *To Kill a Mockingbird* (1960). The novel won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and the next year was made into an Academy Award-winning film.

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Sheriff Heck Tate describes Bob Ewell’s death as an accident—claiming Ewell fell on his own knife—to protect Arthur "[Boo] Radley" from the public scrutiny that would follow his intervention.12

After Boo Radley kills Ewell to save Scout and Jem from an attack, the sheriff recognizes that exposing the reclusive and shy Boo to the town's attention would be a cruel violation of his privacy. Scout demonstrates her moral growth by agreeing with this decision, noting that revealing the truth would be "sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird," a metaphor for destroying an innocent being who has done nothing but good.1