Nolan Wells’ official autopsy results will remain sealed until after a grand jury reviews evidence into the Mississippi teen’s mysterious dissperaance and death.
Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath made the announcement on Thursday — a day after Wells’ family released an indepedent autospy that left unanswered questions into how the 18-year-old turned up dead following a July 4 trip with friends to Horn Island.
“Every death in the county, except those of natural causes and non-criminal car wrecks, are presented to your grand jury. Many people don’t know that,” McIlrath said in a video statement.
“Nolan’s case is being handled the same way, with the same care, and the same commitment to the truth that we handle all death investigations.”
“I understand the public’s urgency to know what happened to Nolan, but we are not taking time for time’s sake. We are taking the time required to complete the work this investigation demands,” she added.
The Jackson County DA doubled down on the efforts by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies investigating Wells’ death amid criticism on how the case has been handled — including scathing accusations by NAACP President Derrick Johnson that local and state Mississippi officials have been “derelict in their duties,” throughout the investigation.
“Every piece of evidence must be examined. Every credible lead must be followed to its conclusion. Every witness interview must be analyzed in context of all other evidence,” McIlrath said.
“The pressure for answers does not change what the work requires,” she said.
McIlrath said that the “rules of professional conduct restrict the information” that a prosecutor can reveal during an investigation, but emphasized that their “responsibility to Nolan and our community is to complete this investigation thoroughly, carefully, without compromise, supported by the evidence, and worthy of the confidence of the people we serve.”
“Our restraint in communicating facts and evidence is not an effort to keep the truth from the public. It is an effort to protect the integrity of this investigation and the grand jury proceeding,” McIlrath added.
The district attorney acknowledged that while discussion around Wells’ death has become “divided,” she knows everyone wants “the same thing, to understand what happened to Nolan.”
“If we sacrifice the integrity of the process in effort to satisfy today’s questions, we risk undermining the confidence in tomorrow’s answers,” McIlrath said.
“Again, our restraint in sharing details of the investigation is not a refusal to share the truth,” she double downed.
McIlrath’s announcement came a day after independent autopsy results for Wells.
Wells’ parents flew their son’s body over 800 miles from their home state of Mississippi to Washington, DC, for an independent autopsy following claims that the circumstances around his death don’t “add up.”
The college football star’s throat was missing following the official post-mortem conducted by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, according to Dr. Roger Mitchell, the former chief medical examiner for Washington, DC, who conducted the second autopsy.
But that is not necessarily unusual as “it is assumed that the initial pathologist retained these structures for additional evaluation,” Mitchell said.
As a result, in part, Mitchell said that his ruling on the cause and manner of Wells’ death is “undetermined pending investigation” — including the release of toxicology results.
Other key factors impacting the ruling include challenges due to decomposition and uncertainty over the cause of a 12-inch “discoloration” to the 18-year-old’s head.
A former top medical examiner told The Post that the independent autopsy report does not indicate that foul play was involved in Wells’ mysterious death.
“I think just to be clear that so far there’s nothing dependent on foul play, but we don’t know what their findings were,” Dr. Michael Baden told The Post after reviewing Wells’ preliminary independent autopsy results.
“Right now, the situation is you can’t tell the cause of death,” Baden added.
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