New details from an independent autopsy of Nolan Wells' body leave unanswered questions
(CNN) — Weeks after an 18-year-old’s body was found floating face-down near an island off the Mississippi coast, an independent autopsy requested by his family has yielded no solid answers about what led to his death.
An independent pathologist described Nolan Wells’ manner of death as undetermined pending further investigation, his preliminary autopsy report says. The teen’s body was found July 6 along the shoreline of Horn Island.
Wells’ death sparked nationwide attention and speculation that race may have played a role, given Mississippi’s fraught racial history. Photos from the trip showed the Black teen surrounded by White friends, though at least one other Black friend was also on the trip.
The independent autopsy, which was privately funded, is separate from the official autopsy performed by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office on July 7. Results from the state’s autopsy investigation have not been released, pending the outcome of standard toxicology tests.
What the independent autopsy reveals – and what it doesn’t
Forensic pathologist Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., who performed the independent autopsy, “identified several limitations … that create barriers to establishing a definitive cause and manner of death for Nolan Xavier Wells,” he wrote in the preliminary report.
“The most significant of the limitations was the inability to directly observe the airway and lungs for water and directly observe the stomach for gastric contents,” Mitchell said. “In addition, the original toxicology results had not been received at the time of this report.”
Mitchell also didn’t have access to all of Wells’ remains after the state’s autopsy, including a portion of the interior of Wells’ neck. But he noted it’s a “common forensic pathology practice” to retain “anterior neck structures during an initial autopsy.”
“Therefore, this pathologist cannot rule out injury to the neck as a contributor or cause of death,” the autopsy report states.
The pathologist said he didn’t find any apparent lacerations, fractures or deep-tissue injuries on Wells’ body. But the level of decomposition “can obscure the presence or absence of bruising on the skin surface, especially during a second autopsy examination,” Mitchell wrote.
He did find “red discoloration in the soft tissue of the back of the head,” the autopsy report states, but it’s not clear what caused the discoloration or whether it had anything to do with Wells’ death.
The red discoloration “could represent decompositional changes of the musculature, or it could be from blunt force injury to the back of the head and neck,” said Dr. Kendall Von Crowns, the chief medical examiner in Tarrant County, Texas, who was not involved in the Wells case.
Questions linger over how Wells ended up in the water
Wells and his friends were on a Fourth of July boat trip to Horn Island, an uninhabited stretch of federally protected land that was busy with holiday revelers, authorities said.
His friends made it back home, but Wells did not. One of the friends said Wells stayed on the island to talk to a girl, but others have cast doubt on that notion.
“We still have more questions than we have answers at this time,” family attorney Ben Crump said.
When a body is found in the water and there’s a “suspicion of drowning it is important to confirm how that person entered the water,” the pathologist wrote in his report. “This information is especially important for those deaths of persons who can swim, as is the case with Nolan Wells.”
The currents near Horn Island can be notoriously rough. The Jackson County coroner told CNN his office has received numerous drowning victims from Mississippi’s barrier islands over the years.
And with no shelters, restrooms or communications on Horn Island, some people venture out into the water, visitors have said.
But even if Wells did drown, other questions loom. The pathologist said he could not tell whether Wells was “conscious or unconscious, forced or unforced” before entering the water.
An agonizing wait for information
The Jackson County sheriff’s department has interviewed dozens of witnesses and is working with the FBI to investigate the case, Mississippi’s Sun Herald reported.
Jackson County’s district attorney told the outlet the case is a priority, and she will forward the results of the law enforcement investigation to a grand jury to decide whether any charges are warranted.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, entertainment mogul Tyler Perry and former NFL star Terrell Owens have offered a combined $125,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case if a crime occurred.
At an emotional news conference Wednesday, Wells’ father said his teen son should be at football practice – not buried in the ground.
“Every day is a is a challenge,” Elmore Wonsley said. “We’re gonna miss our son. And like my wife said, we just want honesty. We want to know what happened to our son.”
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Jamie Gumbrecht and Elise Haulund contributed to this report.
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