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.
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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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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Associated Press reporter Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report. Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut, and Lauer reported from Philadelphia.
