Nolan Wells was just 18 years old. He was a college freshman, a football player, and by
every account a young man who was beloved by the people around him.
On July 4, he joined a group of friends to celebrate the holiday on a trip to Horn Island -- a remote, undeveloped area off the coast of Mississippi that you can only get to by private boat.
But when the friends returned to the mainland that evening, Wells wasn't with them. The friends claimed that they had no idea where Wells had gone after they last saw him around 3 p.m. -- even though they were on an island with nowhere to go. His mother reported him missing immediately. But tragically, days later, search and rescue recovered his body on the west end of the island.
Sign the petition demanding the U.S. Department of Justice open a full, independent investigation into how Nolan Wells died.We still don't have all of the details of what happened,
but what we do know is incredibly concerning.Wells' friends left without him. This was an island with no ferries or public transportation; the only way off is via the private boat that got you there.
Wells' cellphone was on the boat when his friends returned home without him, meaning
he couldn't have even called for help once left alone on the island.Whatever the reason, Wells was left there alone, and no one has said what happened between the moment he was last seen and the moment searchers found his body two days later.
None of this is adding up.Autopsy results have not yet been released, so we do not know the cause of death at this time. But we do know that Nolan's family has
retained civil rights attorney Ben Crump and is publicly calling for answers, transparency, and time to grieve without having to fight for basic information about their son's death.
Nolan was the only Black person in the group he traveled with. That fact combined with his friends' lack of explanation or cohesive story raises serious questions about what happened to Nolan Wells that day. Mississippi is a state with an intensely racist history -- one that arguably influences the present day.
As the family's lawyer aptly pointed out: "This is the state where Emmett Till was lynched."His family deserves to have Wells' death investigated by more than a single local sheriff's office. A local investigation, on its own, cannot guarantee the independence or the transparency this case demands, especially when a young Black man's death is involved and the full circumstances remain unexplained.
Federal civil rights oversight would ensure the investigation goes wherever the facts lead, free from local pressure or assumptions, and would give the Wells family the thorough accounting they have asked for from the very beginning.
Sign this petition and demand the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division open an independent investigation into Nolan Wells' death, so his family finally gets the truth they deserve.Photo courtesy of Jackson County Sheriff's Department