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A person holds a picture of Nolan Xavier Wells during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10, 2026, in New York.<\/p>\n
Yuki Iwamura\/AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura<\/p>\n
Christine Wonsley, mother of Nolan Xavier Wells, reacts as she speaks during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10, 2026, in New York.<\/p>\n
Yuki Iwamura\/AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura<\/p>\n
Christine and Elmore Wonsley, parents of Nolan Xavier Wells, react during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10, 2026, in New York.<\/p>\n
Yuki Iwamura\/AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura<\/p>\n
Elmore Wonsley, father of Nolan Xavier Wells, speaks during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10, 2026, in New York.<\/p>\n
Yuki Iwamura\/AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura<\/p>\n
Ben Crump, civil rights attorney, speaks during a news conference with Christine and Elmore Wonsley, parents of Nolan Xavier Wells, at National Action Network headquarters, Friday, July 10, 2026, in New York.<\/p>\n
Yuki Iwamura\/AP Photo\/Yuki Iwamura<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A week ago, 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells took a boat trip with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July on an island off Mississippi\u2019s Gulf Coast. He never came back.<\/p>\n
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Two days later, he was found dead. What happened, Wells’ parents say, is a mystery riddled with conflicting stories, implausible explanations and missing details. It is a case shadowed by the state’s fraught racial history and lingering distrust in law enforcement.<\/p>\n
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At a news conference Friday in New York City, Christine and Elmore Wonsley called for a thorough and transparent investigation into their son\u2019s death, skeptical of claims that Wells told his friends to leave the island without him and suggestions that he, an elite athlete who knew how to swim, had accidentally drowned.<\/p>\n
Wells\u2019 body was found early Monday along the shore of Horn Island, about 7 miles (11.2 kilometers) off the Mississippi coast, more than a day after he was last seen alive. The roughly 11-mile long (17.7 kilometer) spit of land is near the Alabama state line. The island is uninhabited and accessible only by boat. About 200 people were there on July 4, the family\u2019s lawyers said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just want to know what happened and why our baby didn\u2019t come home,\u201d Christine Wonsley said, looking upward several times as she stood alongside her lawyer, Ben Crump, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who will officiate Wells\u2019 funeral.<\/p>\n
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Family commissions independent autopsy<\/p>\n
Crump said Wells’ family has commissioned an independent autopsy, performed by a forensic pathologist in Washington, D.C. with no ties to Mississippi law enforcement, while they await the results of an official autopsy, which could take weeks. They also plan to employ experts to recover messages that appeared to have been deleted from his cellphone, Crump said. They will eventually turn the device over to authorities, he said.<\/p>\n
Wells’ family also encouraged witnesses to come forward and asked people to submit any video they recorded that may show him on Horn Island, echoing a call by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office to help shed light on the moments before Wells\u2019 disappearance and death.<\/p>\n
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A photo posted on social media, purportedly from the boat ride to the island, shows Wells with his arms around three white male friends. Sheriff John Ledbetter said Wells\u2019 friends were cooperating and that investigators don\u2019t suspect foul play. Crump said those friends now have lawyers and that his investigators haven’t attempted to speak with them yet.<\/p>\n
Wells’ death has led to rampant speculation and suspicion as people grapple with Mississippi’s history of racial tension and what it means to be a Black person in a majority white space.<\/p>\n
Actor and producer Tyler Perry is helping pay for Wells’ funeral, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is helping pay for his independent autopsy, and filmmaker Spike Lee showed up to the news conference to show support for Wells’ family.<\/p>\n
Family doesn’t trust Mississippi authorities, Crump says<\/p>\n
Crump said Wells’ parents hired him to conduct an independent investigation into their son\u2019s death because they don’t trust that law enforcement officials will perform a fair inquiry in a state still reckoning with its Jim Crow past, including the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and the murders of three civil rights workers in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe history of Mississippi is something that they don\u2019t just read about in books,\u201d Crump told reporters at Sharpton\u2019s National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. \u201cIt’s a lived experience for many Black Americans that oftentimes when our children are killed in highly questionable situations that there is this notion that \u2018Oh, there was nothing wrong, no foul play, let\u2019s just sweep it under the rug.\u2019 Well, we refuse to sweep it under the rug.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the second case that Crump has taken on in the state in recent months. He also was recently retained by the family of a Mississippi 1-year-old who was killed when police fired into a moving car.<\/p>\n
Ledbetter told The Associated Press this week that investigators suspect that Wells \u201cchose to stay on the island with the assumption that he was going to ride back to the mainland with someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wells didn’t have his cellphone or keys<\/p>\n
But Wells didn’t have his cellphone or his keys \u2014 his friends did.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhat teenager would leave their phone behind if they\u2019re going to stay on this island? What teenager wouldn\u2019t take their phone?\u201d Crump said. \u201cIt\u2019s not adding up at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crump said bystander video from the island showed a person he said was Wells arguing with someone to give him his phone back. In another discrepancy, Crump said that a witness reported Wells had planned to leave on the boat with his friends, contradicting the sheriff’s theory.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe friends come back and he’s left there with some story about how he said leave him behind,\u201d Sharpton said. \u201cBut then by some magic one of the friends has his keys and his phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sheriff did not return The Associated Press’ messages seeking his response to the family’s concerns.<\/p>\n
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Parents try to track down their son, then report him missing<\/p>\n
Wells\u2019 mother, Christine Wonsley, said she started to worry when a friend of his called her just after 11 p.m. on July 4.<\/p>\n
After trying to track him down on her own, she reported him missing to police and went with her husband to meet an officer in a McDonald\u2019s parking lot, she said, a process exacerbated by a dispute over which law enforcement agency had jurisdiction over the island. One of Wells\u2019 friends had also reported him missing to the U.S. Coast Guard.<\/p>\n
Wells\u2019 father, Elmore Wonsley, said he went out on a boat on the morning of July 5 looking for his son near Horn Island. Crews from multiple local and state agencies began an extensive search, and his body was recovered early Monday, family members confirmed.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf he\u2019s drowning, nobody sees him drown? Nobody offers assistance? Nobody tries to help? I mean, obviously he stands out,” Crump said. “I think he\u2019s the only Black person I saw when I\u2019m looking at the videos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christine Wonsley said she used an app to track his phone and, after a friend went to where it was on land to pick it up, noticed that some of his messages appeared to be deleted. Wells, a shutterbug at social and family events, had two Snapchat accounts \u2014 but both were devoid of pictures or saved messages, she said.<\/p>\n
As they searched for their son, Elmore Wonsley went to retrieve Wells’ keys from the home where he stayed with his friends from the boat the night before their island trip. He said his son’s car was still parked in the yard.<\/p>\n
A peacemaker with football aspirations<\/p>\n
Wells, who would have turned 19 next month, played wide receiver on the football team at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit, Mississippi, and had aspirations of playing at a high-level Division I program.<\/p>\n
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