A Mississippi grand jury has declined to press any criminal charges following the death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, who was found dead after a 4th of July boat trip.
“The Grand Jury finds no credible evidence to support the public allegations that any persons who rode to or from Horn Island on July 4, 2026, on the Triton, the Palm Beach, or the Tideline engaged in any criminal conduct related to the death of Mr. Wells,” stated a grand jury report released late Monday, September 21, per CBS News. “The allegations against the occupants of the Triton, the Palm Beach, and the Tideline [boats that traveled to the island] are not based in truth, and are solely the result of public clamor and private malice.”
The report concluded that the “position of, condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr. Wells’ body is consistent with drowning.”
“Both the State of Mississippi Chief Medical Examiner and [doctor’s name redacted] opined that the cause and manner of Mr. Wells’ death is undetermined and that drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion,” the report said, per Reuters.
In a video statement shared via Facebook, Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said, “There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s disappearance and death were racially motivated. Nolan’s friends loved Nolan, and Nolan loved them.”
Wells, a Black teenager, was reported missing after he failed to return from a July 4 boat trip to Mississippi’s Horn Island with his friends.
At the time, Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter said that Wells’ friends claimed that he chose to stay on Horn Island when the rest of the group left.
“From the people we’ve talked to, it sounds like he chose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else,” Ledbetter said.
Wells’ body was found two days later on the northwest end of Horn Island.
Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, called for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his death. Christine told Good Morning America in July that she couldn’t “fathom” that her son would remain on Horn Island without his friends.
“We always taught him that if you go with a group, you stay with a group,” she said. “If you go with five, you come back with five. Do not separate from the group. Because I always said, ‘Safety is in numbers.’ So he knew to stay with this group, so why would he split from the group? I don’t know.”
In a statement to CBS News on Monday, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Wells’ family, called on the district attorney’s office to keep investigating Wells’ death.
“We don’t know how Nolan died, and neither does the State of Mississippi. Mississippi must keep investigating, and if it will not pursue this to the end, the Department of Justice should,” said the attorney. “This grand jury result leaves us with more questions than answers. Nolan’s family will not rest until we know what happened to him, and neither will we.”
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