Nolan Wells, 18, waved his friends off when their boat started taking on water, choosing to leave the island later with a different group. He never made it back. His body was found days later, close to where he was last seen.
The friends Nolan Wells traveled to Horn Island with left around 4:30pm on the Fourth of July, when their boat began taking on water and the bilge pump failed. He stayed behind, planning to catch a ride inland with another group.
Nolan, 18, was from Ocean Springs, Mississippi. His family describes him as a promising football player in “tip-top shape,” a strong swimmer, and “the kindest soul” who “loved everybody.” He’d cooked dinner for the family the night before.
The account of the boat trouble comes from Ashlee Cole, a Jackson County Chancery Court judge who went to high school with Nolan’s mother and whose son Warren was in the group. Cole says Warren last saw Nolan around 3pm before the others headed for the mainland. She deactivated her Facebook amid the online attention, and her family has since reported receiving death threats. She says they’re willing to cooperate fully with the Wells family and their attorneys.
Nolan’s mother, Christine Wonsley, reported him missing late that night after a friend told her he hadn’t come back. A U.S. National Park Service ranger found a body early Monday, July 6, in shallow water on the northwest tip of Horn Island, close to where Nolan was last seen. The State Medical Examiner’s Office identified him through dental records. On Facebook, Wonsley wrote: “His father, our family, and I are absolutely devastated.”
Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter says investigators have found no evidence of a crime and that preliminary evidence points to drowning, with no immediate signs of trauma. A full autopsy was performed July 7; toxicology and final results are pending. Detectives are still interviewing witnesses and reviewing digital evidence, including a viral video that appears to show people arguing on the shoreline the day Nolan vanished. The person who filmed it says Nolan is visible in the background watching, not fighting.
The family’s questions center on his phone. Nolan didn’t have it on the island. Using a tracking app, his family located it at one of the friends’ homes on the mainland, and the friends returned it. The family says texts and Snapchat messages appeared to have been deleted, and that the friends did not immediately volunteer that they had his phone and keys.
The Wellses have retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who cites “glaring contradictions” in witness accounts and questions how an athletic swimmer could drown on a crowded island on the Fourth of July without anyone seeing it. “We have to close the gap between when his friends said goodbye to the time he went into the water,” Crump said. The family is arranging an independent autopsy in Washington, D.C., with a doctor unaffiliated with Mississippi, and appeared July 10 at a New York press conference alongside Crump and Rev. Al Sharpton.
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