Nolan Wells' family pushes back after grand jury declines to recommend
charges in his death
[September 23, 2026]
By SOPHIE BATES, CLAUDIA LAUER and DAVE COLLINS
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A grand jury has declined to recommend charges in
the death of Nolan Wells, a Black college student who was found dead two
days after a July 4 boat trip and party on an island off the Mississippi
Gulf Coast.
The district attorney announced the grand jury’s findings late Monday
after months of intense speculation about how the 18-year-old went
missing from the party and why Wells’ friends left the island without
him. Wells' family immediately pushed back on the findings that said
there was no evidence of criminal conduct, saying they still didn't have
answers about what happened.
Scrutiny of the investigation started almost immediately, as a photo of
Wells surrounded by white friends on a boat from the day he went missing
fueled online speculation that racial dynamics played a role in his
death. People launched accusations and rumors as they grappled with
Mississippi's history of racial tension and what it means to be a Black
person in a majority-white setting.
The day had started with the group of friends piling into boats and
heading to the popular, uninhabited Horn Island for a gathering of a few
hundred people. It's still unclear what happened after several of the
friends left around 3 p.m. because their boat was taking on water. They
said Wells decided to stay behind.
Wells' family rejects report's findings
The grand jury said in a redacted report posted to the district
attorney's office Facebook page that Wells' death was “consistent with
drowning." The grand jury noted the state's autopsy report, which hasn't
been made public, and an independent one commissioned by Wells’ family
both found bruising on the back of his head but couldn’t determine the
cause of death.
Wells’ mother, Christine Wonsley, said at a news conference Tuesday that
she didn't understand how the grand jury concluded that her son had
likely drowned given the autopsy findings.
“How can a jury come to the conclusion of drowning, despite knowing that
there was trauma to his body, and despite hearing many inconsistencies?”
she said.
Lawyers for Wells’ family, including civil rights attorney Ben Crump,
said the grand jury’s report yielded more questions than answers. They
accused District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath of ending the
investigation despite not determining what caused blunt-force trauma to
Wells' body.
“All other causes must be ruled out prior to certifying a death as
drowning,” Crump, whose team released the final version of the
independent autopsy report Tuesday, said at a news conference. “What is
another cause the district attorney failed to rule out? Blunt force
trauma. ... Common sense tells you that this child did not just drown.”
A witness testified to the grand jury that he saw Wells slip awkwardly
off the side of a boat around 3:30 p.m. on July 4, but that Wells
continued to socialize after the fall and didn’t appear injured, the
report said. The panel said it couldn’t determine whether the fall
caused the bruising on Wells’ body.
Attorneys for friends of Wells who are white and have been the subject
of online accusations hailed the report’s findings, with one saying a
weight has been lifted off his clients.
“He said that he felt like he could breathe for the first time,”
attorney Tyler Cox said of one of Wells’ friends. “This doesn’t bring
Nolan back at all, but this can at least put them on a path where they
can finally mourn Nolan now that they’ve been officially cleared of any
wrongdoing.”
The report renews calls for transparency and more investigation
Crump and others renewed their request Tuesday for the U.S. Department
of Justice to conduct an independent investigation, and they called on
McIlrath to release the investigation file and the state medical
examiner's full autopsy report.
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A person holds a picture of Nolan Xavier Wells during a news
conference at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10,
2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
Representatives from both McIlrath's office and the Mississippi
Department of Public Safety, which oversees the State Medical
Examiner’s Office, declined to release the autopsy report to The
Associated Press. Robert Knochel, the chief prosecutor in McIlrath’s
office, said case file information is exempt from public records
laws.
Kristen Clarke, general counsel for the NAACP and a former head of
the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, said the NAACP supports their call
for further investigation, adding that it would make sense for
federal authorities to step in because the island is federally
maintained and patrolled.
At Wells' funeral, the Rev. Al Sharpton invoked the state's racist
history during his eulogy, including the lynching of Emmett Till and
assassination of Medgar Evers.
“Mississippi’s history painfully teaches us exactly why families
should never be expected to simply accept unanswered questions
surrounding the death of a young Black person,” Sharpton said in a
statement Tuesday. “Transparency and accountability matter."
In her 15-minute video announcing the grand jury findings, McIlrath
expressed frustration about speculation. She also said lawyers for
Wells' family told her office last month that their own
investigation found no evidence of crimes.
“What I cannot accept, what I cannot ignore, is that false
narratives that Nolan’s death was somehow racially motivated, and
that this is a case of another young Black man denied justice by a
racist, corrupt system, were perpetuated and allowed to spread.
There is not a shred of evidence to support these narratives,” she
said.
Questions remain about what led to Wells' death
Wells’ parents and their lawyers voiced suspicions after Wells’
friends left the island on a boat without him, saying he wanted to
stay behind.
Wells’ phone was on the boat, and Crump and Wells’ parents have cast
doubt on why a teenager would choose to stay on an island without
his phone. They also speculated that messages on his phone had been
tampered with and alleged that his friends were reluctant to turn
over his phone and keys. The contents of Wells' phone were included
in the evidence reviewed by the grand jury but were not detailed in
its redacted report.
The grand jury found that it wasn't unusual or suspicious for people
to return from the island on boats they didn't take to get there,
according to the report. It also noted that Wells’ phone wasn't the
only one to travel back to the mainland without its owner that day.
The report also said that although alcohol was found in Wells' body,
the result was highly unreliable because the testing involved
decompositional fluid, which may include alcohol generated after
death by microbial fermentation, it said.
The grand jury report concluded with the panel expressing sympathy
for Wells’ family. “The evidence received in this matter convinced
the Grand Jury of Mr. Wells’ outstanding character,” it said.
___
Associated Press reporter Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to
this report. Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut, and Lauer
reported from Philadelphia.
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