Nolan Wells' family lawyers release cellphone data and autopsy details in push for investigation

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump on Thursday released information from a forensic examination of Nolan Wells’ cellphone, plus details of the official autopsy, at a Stonecrest, Georgia news conference — days after a Mississippi grand jury declined to recommend charges in the 18-year-old Black college student’s death. The family has slammed the panel’s report, wants its investigative materials and the autopsy report made public, and has asked federal authorities to look into the case.

Crump’s team discussed the analysis and read a few Snapchat messages aloud, but released no full report; the grand jury had access to the material, including 282 pages of Snapchat conversations. Crump said the examiner tracked messages against phone location from the day before Wells went missing until his family regained possession.

“The messaging, as I said, was very telling … some of his own friends were concerned about (how) people on Horn Island can be racist,” Crump said.

Wells’ body was found two days after he joined mostly white friends on a July 4 boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island. Friends said he stayed to talk to a girl, but his phone was left on the boat and his family doubts he would have stayed without it.

Forensic examiner Andrew Garrett said Wells face-unlocked the phone on the boat around 2:17 p.m.; it then stayed locked, receiving messages as it travelled by boat and car until the family reclaimed it. Some snaps had been deleted, he said, but he could not ascribe intent, and no evidence showed the phone unlocked after it left the island.

The grand jury said Wells chose to stay behind, that leaving on different boats and leaving phones on boats was common, and sought to clear the friends of wrongdoing, including squashing online rumours; it found his death “consistent with drowning” with no fight on the island.

Crump and Wells’ parents questioned a drowning finding when both autopsies said the cause of death could not be determined and noted unexplained blunt force trauma to the back of his head. The official autopsy, obtained Wednesday night, described fresh bruising and empty airways and stomach — “there is no water in the stomach, there is no water in the lungs and there is no water in the throat,” attorney Liza Park said.

A witness told the grand jury he saw Wells slip off a boat on July 4 but keep socialising uninjured; the panel could not say whether the fall caused the bruising but said it was not fatal.

Sources

• Associated Press, via the Mississippi Free Press: Lawyers for Nolan Wells’ Family Push for Investigation