A grand jury will not pursue charges in the death of Nolan Wells, the local district attorney said Monday, forcefully rejecting months of speculation that race played a role in the death of the Mississippi teenager this summer.
District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath made the announcement in a video message, saying the grand jury unanimously returned a “no true bill,” meaning it did not find sufficient evidence to indict anyone with a crime. A partially redacted copy of the grand jury report was also posted to the DA’s Facebook page.
Wells, 18, was with friends celebrating July Fourth and was last seen on Horn Island, a barrier reef off Mississippi accessible only by boat. His body was found at the northwestern tip of the island July 6, his family’s lawyer said.
“There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s disappearance and death were racially motivated,” Myers McIlrath said Monday. “Nolan’s friends loved Nolan, and Nolan loved them. Nolan chose to stay on the island that day, and there is not a scintilla of evidence to contradict that.”
The family’s lawyer, civil rights attorney Ben Crump, had called into question whether race was a factor in Wells’ death, as it appeared Wells was one of a few Black people there that day.
On Monday, Myers McIlrath took aim at Crump and his team, saying they also previously informed her office that they’d found no evidence a crime had been committed against Wells.
“I’m not suggesting that a grieving mother police the rumors surrounding her child’s death,” the DA said. “What I am suggesting is that the Crump team knew better but did not do better.”
Crump in a statement Tuesday said that the grand jury’s report leaves “more questions than answers” and that neither Wells’ family nor its legal team will rest until they “know what happened to him.”
He said Mississippi’s medical examiner found bruising on the back of Wells’ head and that an independent autopsy revealed traces of blood and “recent blunt force injuries” to the back of his head and back.
“To this day, not one person has explained how they got there,” Crump said.
The grand jury report noted bruising to the back of Wells’ head, as well as disagreement between the state’s medical examiner and a forensic pathologist retained by the Wells family regarding “non-deep tissue” bruising on his buttocks and shoulder.
The report, however, said the bruising to Wells’ head was “not a fatal injury,” and added that a witness testified to seeing Wells awkwardly slip off the boat. The witness could not say whether Wells hit his head but testified that he continued to socialize.
The grand jury issued 132 subpoenas and heard from 43 witnesses, and seven people were invited to testify before the panel, according to the partially redacted report.
It was made up of 23 grand jurors from a “cross section of citizens” from Jackson County between 27 and 68 years old, it said. Among them were 13 men and 10 women, including “12 Caucasians, five African Americans, one Asian, two Hispanics, two Native Americans and one individual who preferred ‘other,’” it said.
“The grand jury finds 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 report released by McIlrath’s office said.
Wells was last seen sometime in the afternoon of July 4. Friends told police that they had to leave early because their boat started taking on water but that Wells chose to stay and catch a ride back later with others.
The grand jury report found that it was common for people on Horn Island to “socialize on boats and in the water,” and that it was “not unusual or suspicious” for people to return from the island on different boats.
It concluded there was no evidence that Wells had any sort of physical altercation or argument with anyone the day he was last seen. It added “that the position of, the condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr. Wells’ body is consistent with drowning.”
Crump and Wells’ family have previously rejected notions that he drowned, saying he was athletic and a good swimmer. An independent autopsy commissioned by the family’s legal team found that the teenager’s cause and manner of death were “undetermined.”
The state’s chief medical examiner and the forensic pathologist retained by Wells’ family both “opined that the cause and manner of Mr. Wells’ death is undetermined and that drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion,” according to the grand jury report. It noted, however, that neither has ruled out accidental drowning as a cause.
“We don’t know how Nolan died, and neither does the State of Mississippi,” Crump said. “Mississippi must keep investigating.”
Wells’ funeral attracted hundreds of people.
“Your absence has left an emptiness that can never truly be filled,” his mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, said at the time. “In a world that can often feel dark, be like Nolan, be the light that brightens the lives of those around you.
