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A grand jury made a unanimous decision late Monday night to not bring criminal charges against anyone in the mysterious death of Nolan Wells, a Mississippi teen who died after a boat outing with friends on 4 July.
The Jackson county, Mississippi grand jury, which met from 14 September to 18 September, issued 132 subpoenas during its investigation, considered evidence from 43 witnesses and investigators, and reviewed an independent investigation by Wells’ family. They also considered physical and digital evidence, including mobile phone data and forensic reports, photographs, videos and GPS data.
A copy of the grand jury report was posted online by the Jackson county district attorney’s office, which said that there was “no credible evidence to support the public allegations that any persons who rode to or from Horn Island on July 4, 2026 … engaged in any criminal conduct related to the death of Mr Wells”.
“The allegations against the occupants of the Triton, the Palm Beach, and the Tideline [boats that traveled to the island] are not based in truth, and are solely the result of public clamor and private malice,” the report says.
Wells’ case drew national attention, with many speculating about what happened and suspecting that the teen’s disappearance and death may have been racially motivated. Wells, who was Black while the friends with whom he was last seen were white, was also the only friend in the group who didn’t return from the trip to the barrier island that day.
Per the grand jury report, Wells chose to stay behind on the island and come back later with another group as it was “not unusual or suspicious for individuals to return from the island on boats they did not travel … on”. Wells’ family, however, has consistently pushed back on this claim, suggesting that it is not something that the teen would have done.
“We always taught him that if you go with a group, you stay with a group,” said Elmore Wonsley, his father, during the Good Morning America appearance in July. “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’ family, through their attorney Ben Crump, announced the results of an autopsy performed by Dr Roger A Mitchell Jr, a forensic pathologist the team hired, in late July. Mitchell found that Wells had “sustained recent unexplained blunt force injuries to the back of the head and additional areas of his back”.
Both the independent autopsy and the state’s chief medical examiner said that the cause and manner of Wells’ death were undetermined.
“Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion,” the grand jury report said. They also found that “the position of, the condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr Wells’ body is consistent with drowning”.
The grand jury found that Wells was not the only Black person on Horn Island on 4 July, and that “false assertions have led to misidentification, speculation, and rumors concerning the death of Mr Wells”, according to the report.
“The family, the Crump team, and anyone close to Nolan knew that his disappearance and death were not the result of racial hate or violence,” said Angel Myers McIlrath, Jackson county district attorney, in a video posted on social media alongside the grand jury report on Monday.
The 23 grand jurors included 13 men and 10 women. Twelve of the jurors were white, five were Black, two were Hispanic, two were Native American, one was Asian and one was identified as “other”, according to information released by the district attorney’s office.
“There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s disappearance and death were racially motivated,” Myers McIlrath said in the video.
Crump, the civil rights attorney who is representing the Wells family, said the grand jury’s decision is an attempt “to close the chapter on Nolan Wells’ death without getting to the truth”.
Wells’ legal team is releasing Mitchell’s full report and requesting that the Jackson County district attorney do the same with the state’s medical examiner’s report. Additionally, they are calling on the district attorney’s office to keep the investigation open and active. Crump said that the report “leaves us with more questions than answers”.
“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 said in a statement. “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 Mitchell also wrote that the record does not establish whether Nolan entered the water on his own or was forced, or whether he was conscious when he went in. We don’t know how Nolan died, and neither does the state of Mississippi. Mississippi must keep investigating, and if it will not pursue this to the end, the Department of Justice should. ”
There is no statute of limitations for homicide cases in Mississippi, something the grand jury report noted. If any evidence were to emerge that suggests that Wells’ death was not accidental, it should be referred to the grand jury for consideration.
