Nolan Wells’ grieving parents speak, attorney says son’s death ‘isn’t adding up’
The circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells of Ocean Springs aren’t adding up, family attorney Ben Crump told Michael Strahan on Friday in a Good Morning America interview, the first featuring Wells’ family.
The death of Wells, who is Black, came after he boated with white friends to Horn Island, where hundreds celebrated the Fourth of July about 6 miles offshore. His family and one of those friends reported Wells missing Saturday evening, when the search for the popular football player began. A National Park Service ranger found his body in the water as it washed up near the shoreline Monday morning.
His phone had remained on the boat with his friends, one of several oddities that Crump, a high-profile civil rights attorney, is questioning.
“No young person leaves their cell phone,” said Crump, a civil rights and personal injury lawyer who was accompanied by Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley.
“It’s not adding up,” Crump said, “and that is the problem when you think about the history of Mississippi.”
Nolan Wells’ parents speak
Although Christine Wonsley, a nurse practitioner, has written public posts on her Facebook page, the GMA interview was the first that Wells’ devastated parents have given. They also talked to CBS Mornings.
The Wonsleys and Crump will hold an 11 a.m. CT news conference Friday in Harlem with the Rev. Al Sharpton. Crump’s firm is conducting an independent investigation of Wells’ disappearance, which will include an autopsy.
Crump said that civil rights activist and former football player Colin Kaepernick paid for the private autopsy. The private autopsy results should be available today, Crump has previously said.
The state released Wells’ body to the family after completing its autopsy earlier this week. No results have been released from the state autopsy. The State Medical Examiner’s Office is awaiting results from expedited toxicology tests before releasing those results, Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd has said.
On GMA, the Wonsleys also talked about their son, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College in Summit who was supposed to head back Monday for football camp. His father said that Wells was focused on his training.
“I know a lot of his teammates; they all look to him as a leader,” Elmore Wonsley said. “He’s more like a silent leader, not real big on words, more action, which is kind of like I was.
“So, Nolan was just like this bright light, right?” Christine Wonsley said. “Walk into a room, his smile, his energy was just so infectious. It’s almost like he drew you into him, He was just one of those people, he always wanted everyone to be included. “
Attorney Crump, parents find inconsistencies
Wells was last seen on the island around 3 p.m., according to the lead investigating agency, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. Based on interviews, investigators told Wells’ parents that the young man decided to stay on the island after his friends headed to shore Saturday afternoon.
Elmore Wonsley told Strahan that doesn’t make sense.
“We always taught him, if you go with a group, you stay with a group,” Elmore Wonsley said.
“ . . . If you go with five, you come back with five. Do not separate from the group, because safety is in numbers, and he always said, ‘Yes, sir.’ So he knew to stay with his group. So why would he split from his group? I don’t know.”
His mother said that Wells had been going occasionally to Horn Island with his friends since last year. She always heard from him when he returned.
“But this time,” she said, “there was no call or text from him. It was from his friend.”
His friends from the boat didn’t call to say they had the phone, Crump pointed out. Instead, Wonsley’s friends since early childhood pinpointed the location on Snapchat, a social media application especially popular with young people, who like to share their locations.
Christine Wonsley said her sister retrieved the phone. Snapchat messages linger for 24 hours, but they found none on Wells’ phone, leading them to believe messages were deleted because he was constantly shooting videos and had two Snapchat accounts.
“I was just like, ‘That can’t be,’ “ Christine Wonsley said.
His father said that Wells had been talking to a girl on the island who told investigators that the young man told her when he left that he was returning to the boat with his friends, but his friends said he wanted to stay with her.
“So that’s an obvious contradiction,” Crump said.
Like any parents, Christine Wonsley said, they just want to know what happened to their son. They set up a GoFundMe account that by Friday morning had raised more than $378,000 for funeral and other expenses.
“We just want honesty and transparency,” Wells’ mother said. “We want a thorough investigation. We want that same respect that would be given to anybody else and that’s it. We just want answers.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2026 at 9:14 AM.
