Not necessarily. The only thing that LE has said on record (at least the only thing that I found) was that there was no activity on his cell phone record.
"staying in contact with his family and friends; and theres been nothing on his cellphone record since he was reported missing.
http://www.durangoherald.com/articl...ment-says-missing-teenager-did-not-run-away--
This exact same phrasing is repeated in a couple other articles. The information that his phone was
turned off around 8pm came from a Facebook post, NOT LE, so I'm not taking it as fact.
I do wonder if in fact his phone was pinging, but because he doesn't have GPS on his phone, they were only able to triangulate it's general location which is far from exact. So, what I'm saying is maybe they tried to locate his phone, but were unable, and eventually it stopped pinging because the battery died.