What happened to Nolan Wells? Family seeks answers two weeks after 18-year-old’s death

A person holds a picture of Nolan Xavier Wells during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, on 10 July 2026 in New York. Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP View image in fullscreen A person holds a picture of Nolan Xavier Wells during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters, on 10 July 2026 in New York. Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP What happened to Nolan Wells? Family seeks answers two weeks after 18-year-old’s death Investigation continues after college freshman was found dead on Mississippi island after 4 July boat trip with friends Two weeks after Nolan Xavier Wells was found dead, his family is still searching for answers. On 4 July, Wells, an 18-year-old Mississippi college freshman, and a group of friends took a boat out to Horn Island, a barrier island a few miles off the Mississippi Gulf coast. About 300 young adults gathered on a section of the island for a “last hurrah” before returning to college or work, one of Wells’s friends said. Wells’s parents were supposed to take him to Southwest Mississippi Community College for football camp the following Monday. Body of missing 18-year-old Nolan Wells found on Mississippi island Read more Wells’s friends, his phone and his keys returned that day; he did not. Instead, after a missing person search that received national attention, his body was found on the island on 6 July. What exactly happened on Horn Island is still unclear, as is how the Ocean Springs native died; an investigation by local officials is ongoing. In the absence of answers, misinformation, particularly on social media, is rampant. Here’s what we know so far. Family speaks out Late on 4 July, a Facebook post by Christine Wonsley, Wells’s mother, in which she sought answers about her then missing son, went viral . When she shared a photo of Wells, who was Black, and three friends, who are white, social media users began suggesting that whatever happened to Wells was racially motivated. At a press conference on 10 July in New York, after Wells’s body was found, Wonsley addressed the racial nature of the situation. “Me and his dad had conversations with him all the time, not just about the importance of understanding our history as Black people, but also the importance of how you have to move in certain spaces,” she said, standing by the Rev Al Sharpton and Ben Crump, who the family has retained as an attorney. Crump said on Sunday at the New Birth Missionary Baptist church outside Atlanta: “We are in Mississippi. These were three young white men. Nolan was the only young Black man. Had the roles been reversed, we know this investigation would be going differently. It would be like the first 48. They would be interrogating those young, Black boys.” Ashlee Cole, the mother of one of Wells’s white friends and a Jackson county chancery judge, denied that her family had hindered the investigation in a statement. She said that her son had been interviewed by the Jackson county sheriff’s office and alleg