The mysterious death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells is facing a new wave of scrutiny after the family’s legal team released medical findings they say directly contradict the conclusions reached by a Mississippi grand jury. While the grand jury recently concluded its review without returning indictments, determining that the position and condition of Wells’ body were consistent with an accidental drowning, autopsy documentation released by the family’s attorneys tells what they describe as a very different story.
According to the family’s legal team, the official Mississippi State Medical Examiner report, signed August 17, found no water or fluid in Wells’ lungs, throat, or stomach, with the gastrointestinal tract unremarkable and the airways clear. Because drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion that requires ruling out other possibilities, the family says that both state and independent pathologists officially certified Wells’ cause and manner of death as “undetermined,” rather than confirming drowning outright.
The Wells family is represented by prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump. Liza A. Park, senior attorney in the Atlanta office of Ben Crump Law, pushed back forcefully on the grand jury’s conclusions during a news conference. “There’s no water in the stomach. There’s no water in the lungs. There’s no water in the throat,” Park said, pointing to what she described as a contradiction between the grand jury’s determination and the medical examiner’s own findings. “Yet the grand jury wants to determine it as an accidental drowning.”
Crump’s legal team also pointed to findings from an independent autopsy conducted by Dr. Roger Mitchell, which they say revealed subcutaneous scalp contusions occurring within roughly four hours of Wells’ death. Crump argued that the combination of recent physical trauma and the lack of fluid in Wells’ airways means the case is far from closed, in his view.
Beyond the physical autopsy, the family’s legal team has pointed to digital forensic evidence extracted from Wells’ phone as a central part of their push for further investigation. According to a September 23 letter from digital forensics expert Andrew Garrett to Crump, an analysis of hundreds of thousands of digital artifacts, including unified logs, databases, media caches, and notification records, found that someone took deliberate action to unsend or delete specific messages sent to Wells.
The letter also reportedly tracked the device’s movement to and from the island, Wells’ physical activity data from Apple Health, and his last social media interactions. Crump’s team says Wells’ last outgoing text was sent around 11:30 p.m. on July 3, when he thanked his aunt, and that he primarily communicated through Snapchat and Instagram. The legal team says it possesses group chat messages, some of which continued syncing to the device after Wells had already died, though it has not disclosed the names of those involved.
According to Crump’s team, messages within the friend group raised concern, including references to unfamiliar individuals parked in a nearby boat on July 4 and, by July 5, expressions of concern among friends about the situation on Horn Island. These characterizations come from the family’s legal team and have not been independently verified or addressed by investigators. During the same press conference, the family’s team also played audio clips of witnesses describing unfamiliar individuals near the group’s location that day; these accounts, too, remain unconfirmed through official channels.
It’s worth noting that the grand jury reviewed physical evidence, digital records, and testimony from 43 witnesses before reaching its determination, and officials have not yet issued a public response to the specific findings the family’s attorneys are now highlighting.
For Wells’ family, the grand jury’s decision has not brought closure. Supported by Crump and the NAACP, the family is calling on the District Attorney’s office to keep the investigation active, and is asking the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an independent federal review into what happened on Horn Island.
