No Charges in Nolan Wells’ Death, Grand Jury Finds

A Mississippi grand jury has declined to bring criminal charges in the death of Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old college student whose body was found off the Gulf Coast in July after a Fourth of July boat trip with friends. The Jackson County panel announced late Monday that it found “no credible evidence” of criminal conduct, concluding a high-profile investigation that had drawn national attention and demands for federal intervention.

The unanimous decision effectively ends the criminal phase of a case that became a flashpoint over race, transparency, and the pace of local law enforcement. But Wells’ family and their attorney, civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, immediately rejected the finding, saying it leaves the central question — how the teenager died — unresolved.

A July trip and a discovery

Wells was found dead on Horn Island on July 6, two days after he boated to the barrier island with several friends to celebrate Independence Day, according to NPR. He was the only Black member of his friend group and the only one who did not return from the trip — a detail that, combined with social media speculation, fueled claims that his death may have been racially motivated.

The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office initially investigated the case as a death, not a homicide, NPR reported in the days after the discovery, a decision that frustrated the family and prompted Crump and the Rev. Al Sharpton to hold a press conference in New York. Colin Kaepernick later helped fund an independent autopsy, and filmmaker Tyler Perry assisted with funeral expenses.

What the grand jury concluded

The panel met from September 14 to 18, issuing 132 subpoenas and hearing from more than 40 witnesses, the Guardian reported. Its 23 members — 12 white, five Black, two Hispanic, two Native American, one Asian and one identified as “other” — reviewed GPS data, cellphone extractions, photos, videos, forensic reports and findings from the family’s own investigation.

In its report, the grand jury determined that Wells’ cause of death was consistent with drowning, based on body position, location and multiple autopsies. The official cause remains “undetermined” — authorities described drowning as a “diagnosis by exclusion” rather than a positive finding.

The panel also found that Wells chose to stay on the island the afternoon of July 4, calling it “not unusual or suspicious for individuals to return from the island on boats they did not travel on.” It concluded that accounts from the occupants of the three boats involved — the Triton, the Palm Beach and the Tideline — were truthful, including that the Triton took on water and needed towing. The grand jury further found that a thorough search of the island occurred on July 5, a day before Wells’ body was discovered.

“The allegations against the occupants of the Triton, the Palm Beach, and the Tideline are not based in truth, and are solely the result of public clamor and private malice,” the report said.

Family pushes back on ‘undetermined’

Crump posted a pointed response hours after the report’s release, titling his statement “No True Bill Does Not Resolve How Nolan Wells Died.” A no true bill means a grand jury declined to issue an indictment.

“Mississippi’s own pathologist found two bruises on the back of this young man’s head and informed investigators of them early in this investigation,” Crump wrote. “An independent autopsy documented traces of blood and recent blunt force injuries to the back of Nolan’s head and his back. To this day, not one person has explained how they got there.”

Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the forensic pathologist hired by the family, described the same uncertainty in the independent autopsy report released Monday. “The available record does not definitively establish the decedent’s condition immediately before entering the water, whether he entered voluntarily or was forced, whether he was conscious or impaired, or why he would have been unable to extricate himself despite reportedly being able to swim and while in the presence of other persons,” Mitchell wrote.

Wells’ father, Elmore Wonsley, has repeatedly questioned the idea that his son would have separated from the group. “We always taught him that if you go with a group, you stay with a group,” he said during a July television appearance. “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’ mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, said the speculation had already taken a toll. “Damage has already been done because that’s the narrative that’s being pushed by the general public,” she said at a July 22 press conference. “This is not how I wanted the world to meet my son.”

Dueling accounts of the investigation

The case exposed bitter disagreements not just about how Wells died, but about how the state handled the inquiry. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath defended the secrecy that surrounded the investigation, Mississippi Free Press reported, insisting that withholding evidence protected the integrity of the process.

“The secrecy of the grand jury is not a veil that we hide behind,” she said in a recorded statement released Monday night. “It is a shield that protects the integrity of prosecutions of the guilty and is meant to protect the innocent from the destruction of false allegations.”

McIlrath directly disputed several claims made by Crump’s team during the investigation, saying it had allowed the public to believe false narratives — including that the medical examiner withheld organs, that evidence was deleted from Wells’ phone, and that she refused to cooperate with the phone examination. “All lies,” she said.

She also stated that the family, the Crump team and those close to Nolan knew his death was “not the result of racial hate or violence,” and warned that the case had produced real harm. “What we have seen happen in Nolan’s case, where lives and reputations have been damaged, is reprehensible,” she said. “Witnesses, public officials, and others who are completely unrelated to this case have been subjected to threats of harm and intimidation by an angry mob.”

Pressure for a federal review

The decision is unlikely to quiet calls for outside scrutiny. In August, the Congressional Black Caucus sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel urging an independent federal review, the CBC said, citing the lack of transparency and unanswered questions more than a month after Wells’ death.

“The Wells family deserves to understand what happened to their son,” the CBC wrote. “They deserve answers. They deserve transparency.”

Crump echoed that demand Monday. “We don’t know how Nolan died, and neither does the state of Mississippi,” he said. “Mississippi must keep investigating, and if it will not pursue this to the end, the Department of Justice should.”

What comes next

Because Mississippi has no statute of limitations on homicide cases, new evidence could still be presented to a grand jury — something the panel’s own report acknowledged. The family’s legal team has asked the district attorney to keep the investigation open and to release the state medical examiner’s full report, and civil litigation is expected; attorneys sent letters to Wells’ friends and their families signaling that lawsuits were “reasonably anticipated.”

The case has also spawned defamation threats in multiple directions, with friends of Wells threatening to sue figures including Sharpton and television host Sunny Hostin.

For now, the grand jury’s finding closes one chapter while leaving the family’s most urgent question open: how an 18-year-old who friends said could swim ended up dead in the waters off Horn Island, and what, if anything, the injuries found on his body signify.

As Mitchell put it in the independent autopsy, the record simply “does not definitively establish” what happened. Until that changes, the argument over Nolan Wells’ death is far from settled.