Family attorney cites missing neck structures, discoloration
Independent exam yields no answers as family demands transparency
An independent autopsy of Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old Mississippi college freshman whose body was found on Horn Island on July 6 after he disappeared during a July Fourth boat trip with friends, has determined his cause and manner of death are both “undetermined, pending investigation,” family attorney Ben Crump announced Wednesday.
The findings came nearly three weeks after Wells’s death and as his family continues to press for answers about what happened. During a press conference, Crump said the preliminary autopsy also noted that Wells’s body, when received for examination following the state’s autopsy, was missing its interior neck structures. He said there was significant “red discoloration” in the tissue in the back of the teen’s head for unknown reasons.
The independent exam was conducted by Dr. Roger Mitchell, the former chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C., and was paid for by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Wells’s body was received for the autopsy by Mitchell after the state of Mississippi completed its own examination. The state has not yet released its autopsy results, Crump said.
Speaking at the NAACP national convention in Chicago, Crump said the independent investigators were not able to see the body when it was recovered. By the time Mitchell received it on July 10, he said, the body was so decomposed that it was difficult to determine whether the teen had been bruised or whether the marks were the result of decomposition.
During the press conference, Christine Wonsley, Wells’s mother, said that a member of the Cajun Navy — a volunteer search-and-rescue organization — reported that Wells was found fully clothed and face down on the island. In the last known photos of the teen taken the day he disappeared, he was not wearing a shirt.
The circumstances of Wells’s death have drawn national attention and prompted calls from Black leaders for transparency. Wells was Black, while many of the people on the island with him were white. Crump said there were 300 to 400 people on the island that day, something he said makes it difficult to believe no one knows what happened to one of the few Black people in attendance.
Shortly after Wells’s body was found, Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter said he did not suspect foul play — a statement Wonsley said during the press conference was premature. MSI previously reported that the family has raised concerns about the handling of the investigation, including allegations that messages were deleted from Wells’s phone and discrepancies between witness accounts.
Wells’s friends told authorities that the teen decided to stay on the island when the group departed, a claim his parents said they find difficult to believe.
“We always taught him that if you go with a group, you stay with a group,” Elmore Wonsley, his father, said during an appearance on Good Morning America. “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.”
Wells was laid to rest in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, his hometown, on Monday. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath has committed to presenting the completed investigation to a grand jury, the family’s attorneys said earlier this month. Due to the lack of information about what exactly happened, conversations about Wells’s case on social media are full of misinformation and speculation, Crump said.