LPEACE

On July 4, 18-year-old Nolan Wells had joined a group of friends on boats out to Horn Island, Mississippi where locals gathered to swim, fish, and party. Wells never made it back home. His body was found washed up on the island two days later. The last known photo of Wells showed him sitting on a boat next to three white friends. The story ricocheted around social media, fueled by suspicions that his death echoed Mississippi’s history of racist violence. It sparked conversations about the safety of Black people in predominantly white spaces. Some accused Wells’s white friends of murder; others blamed Wells’s family for inflaming racial tensions without proof his death was anything but an accident. In late September, a grand jury declined to issue any indictments for Wells’s death. By the time its findings were announced, locals said the attention on the tragedy had quieted down with no satisfying resolution about what happened. “I feel like Ocean Springs as a whole wants this to just go away,” said Wells’s mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley. But the questions surrounding what exactly happened to him on Horn Island have not gone away. Wells-Wonsley and Elmore Wonsley, Wells’s father, have held firm to their suspicions. They said they have not made any accusations against the boat boys, but they’ve noted inconsistencies among the accounts of those there that day. “It was never our intent to make this a racist thing,” Wells-Wonsley said. “We are just parents who want to know. But at the end of the day, unfortunately, you can’t erase Mississippi’s history. You can’t erase America’s history when we talk about racism.” Wells-Wonsley and Wonsley continue to advocate for a deeper investigation while managing a pain she has called “insurmountable.” At times, their pursuit of answers has felt all-consuming. “We are still stuck,” Wells-Wonsley said. “We’re stuck in grief. We’re stuck in questions.” Read Albert Samaha’s full report: nymag.visitlink.me/BsSEgU