Black News · Sep 28, 2026Nolan Wells: The Full Timeline, the Autopsy Injuries, and the Drowning Data Behind the Case

Nolan Wells Case · September 28, 2026 · In-Depth Report

Six days after a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict anyone in the death of Nolan Xavier Wells, the case is more contested, not less. A forensic cellphone exam commissioned by the family says data was deleted; the district attorney disputes that reading and accuses the family’s legal team of “grandstanding.” A newly released state autopsy detail — no water found in Wells’ lungs, stomach, or throat — has reopened the drowning question the grand jury treated as settled. And Wells’ death sits inside a national pattern: Black Americans drown at meaningfully higher rates than White Americans, a gap this report visualizes with real CDC data rather than describing in the abstract.^[1][2]

• Cellphone forensics commissioned by the family found deleted Snapchat data; the DA says the deletions were made by other Snapchat users, not someone accessing Wells’ phone.^[2]
• The state autopsy recorded two bruises on the back of Wells’ head and found “no fluid or debris” in his airways and an empty stomach. The family’s pathologist concluded the head injury happened shortly before death and identified three more probable bruises on his back that the state report did not record.^[20][21]
• Jackson County’s own coroner’s office recorded zero drowning deaths on Horn Island in the six years before Wells died.^[3]
• Nationally, Black Americans have drowned at a higher rate than White Americans every year from 2019 through 2022, and the gap widens sharply for pool drownings in early adolescence.^[4]
• Hundreds protested again in Ocean Springs on September 27, the second such march since Wells’ death.^[5]

The Story So Far

Wells, an 18-year-old Black college freshman and football scholarship athlete, traveled to Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast, on a boat trip with friends on July 4, 2026. He was last confirmed seen on the island around 3 p.m.; the boat left without him at 4:31 p.m., according to its own GPS log. His family reported him missing that night, and his body was found on the island’s shoreline two days later, identified through dental records.^[6][7]

This report updates Kemetic Minds’ September 22 coverage of the grand jury’s no true bill and our continuously updated live case tracker. Everything below the timeline is new reporting from September 24–27: the cellphone forensic findings, the DA’s on-the-record rebuttal, the newly disclosed autopsy detail about airway fluid, and a second round of street protests.

1. The Full Timeline

Every entry below is independently reported and dated. For an interactive, hoverable version of this same timeline — plus the drowning-data charts referenced later in this report, including a 3D chart rendered on its own data page — visit the Nolan Wells Data & Timeline Dashboard.

2. In Their Own Words: Two Videos, Two Accounts

This case has produced two competing on-camera accounts, both primary sources rather than news packages about them. Watch both before forming a view of either.

3. What the Cellphone Forensics Found — and What’s Disputed

Forensic examiner Andrew Garrett, hired by the family’s legal team, spent roughly 30 hours extracting more than a million data artifacts from Wells’ phone. Garrett said the phone stayed on the boat all day and was last accessed at 2:18 p.m. His team recovered roughly 300 pages of deleted Snapchat messages and said the deletions occurred after Wells last had the phone in his possession.^[2]

“There were things that were deleted from the phone”

Andrew Garrett, forensic examiner, September 24 press conference.^[2]

Crump was careful to frame the finding as a question, not an accusation, telling reporters “we don’t know what happened to Nolan Wells” before adding:

“We’re not accusing anybody of anything nefarious”

Ben Crump, September 24 press conference.^[2]

DA McIlrath disputed the interpretation the same day, in a written statement: “The user action discussed by Mr. Garrett is from other snapchat users, not someone physically accessing Nolan Wells’ phone.”^[23] She added:

“The information I have released to the public is true and accurate, and I stand by it.”

DA Angel Myers McIlrath, responding to the Crump press conference, September 24.^[1]

McIlrath also said the family’s team gave her office only a partial extraction — two emails and roughly 300 pages — rather than the full 30-hour digital download, and challenged Crump’s team to “stop playing games” if they have evidence of a crime.^[1] Neither side has produced the underlying forensic file publicly as of this report’s cutoff. This is a genuine, unresolved factual dispute between two named parties, not a settled finding in either direction.

4. The Injuries and the Lungs: What Both Autopsy Reports Actually Say

Two forensic pathologists examined Nolan Wells, and both of their reports are now public. Mississippi State Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner performed the first autopsy in Biloxi on July 7 and signed her report on August 17.^[20] Dr. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., the former chief medical examiner of Washington, D.C., hired by the family, performed a second autopsy on July 10. He later reviewed the state’s retained tissue, its original autopsy photographs and about 750 pages of investigative files, and signed a final report on September 14.^[21] Both classify the cause and manner of death as undetermined. Everything below is quoted from those two reports and from the grand jury’s own report, which heard testimony from Dr. Mitchell.^[22]

One fact shapes every finding: the body had been in the water about two days and was, in the state’s words, “decomposed with diffuse skin slippage, bloating, and gray-green skin discoloration.”^[20]

Blunt force trauma to the back of the head

The state report records “two dark red-purple subcutaneous scalp contusions” over the superior nuchal line, the bony ridge at the back of the skull where the neck muscles attach. “Each measures approximately 2 inches. There are no external scalp injuries. No fractures are in the skull. No hemorrhages overlie the brain.”^[20]

Dr. Mitchell’s second autopsy found “a 12 X 8-inch area of ‘red discoloration’ in the deep soft tissues overlying the occipital bone.” After reviewing the first autopsy and its photographs and examining tissue under the microscope, he wrote that the area “has been confirmed as blood (bruises/contusions) secondary to blunt force injury to the back of the head.”^[21]

The timing comes from the microscope. Mitchell found “a small, microscopic area of blood in the soft-tissue (hemorrhage) without evidence of white blood cells,” which he says suggests “a probable recent injury prior to death.” White blood cells, he explains, “become increasingly detectable at approximately 4 hours after hemorrhage,” so a bruise without them is “compatible with a very recent antemortem injury, generally within the first few hours.”^[21] He also notes that decomposition limited how much blood could still be identified.

He faults the first examination: the state pathologist “failed to take close-up pictures of the contusions, dissect the area at the back of the head, or take histological sections of the area of bruising.” She did report the bruises to the sheriff’s department on July 7, 2026, “however, this forensic pathologist could not find any record detailing specific investigation into the blunt force injury to the back of head.”^[21]

The grand jury found that the head bruising “was not a fatal injury.” A witness testified under oath that he saw Wells “slip awkwardly off the side of a boat around the time of 3:30 p.m.” but “could not say whether Mr. Wells struck his head during the fall,” and said Wells kept socializing and did not appear hurt. The jurors wrote that they “cannot say with absolute certainty that this fall caused this bruising.”^[22]

The bruises on his body

This is where the two pathologists disagree. The state report describes the back as “Atraumatic” and finds “No other external or internal injuries.”^[20] Reviewing the state’s own photographs, Mitchell identified “two probable contusions of the lower back just above the buttocks and left upper back adjacent to the shoulder blade (These injuries were not documented in the first autopsy report).”^[21]

He is careful about their limits: “It is difficult to identify the size and cause of these bruises from a single photograph.” None was photographed up close or sampled for the microscope, and his own dissection of the back, buttocks, arms and legs found “No Evidence of Deep Tissue Injury.”^[21] The grand jury report and the district attorney describe the dispute the same way: the doctors differ on “whether there was superficial, non-fatal, non-deep tissue bruising on Nolan’s buttocks and shoulder.”^[22][23]

Mitchell’s conclusion is the sentence most often cited by the family: “Nolan Wells suffered unwitnessed apparent acute blunt force injuries to the head and body prior to his death. At the time of this report, this forensic pathologist is not aware of definitive circumstances that led to the aforementioned injuries.”^[21]

Both examinations checked the neck structures that can show strangulation. The state found the larynx and hyoid bone “without hemorrhages or fractures”; Mitchell found no acute or recent injury to the hyoid bone or thyroid cartilage, and no fractures or deep tissue injury in the face, neck, ribs or pelvis.^[20][21]

No water in the lungs

The state report’s lung entry reads: “No fluid or debris is within the airways.” Its stomach entry: “The stomach is empty.” Each chest cavity held about 100 mL of “red-brown decomposition fluid.”^[20] Mitchell confirms that “the original Mississippi forensic pathologist did not identify water in the airway nor was there gastric contents (including water) within the stomach,” and his microscope slides of the lungs show “decomposed pulmonary tissue architecture, marked.”^[21]

Neither report says the absence of water rules drowning in or out. What both pathologists stress, and the grand jury repeated, is that drowning “is a ‘diagnosis of exclusion.’ This means that all other causes must be ruled out prior to certifying a death as drowning.”^[21][22] The forensic literature explains why the lungs alone can’t settle it. A 2024 review of postmortem findings describes “the lack of drowning-specific pathological findings postmortem” in bodies recovered from water.^[25] And a 2021 forensic case report notes that “if the drowned victim is decomposing, there are no typical signs,” so pathologists weigh the external, internal and laboratory findings together.^[24] Neither report mentions a diatom test, a laboratory test for microscopic algae that can support a drowning diagnosis.^[20][21][24]

So the finding matters, but in a specific way: an empty airway and empty stomach are one more reason both pathologists declined to certify drowning, not proof that Wells died some other way. The grand jury reached its “consistent with drowning” finding from where and how the body was found, and wrote that “neither forensic expert has ruled out accidental drowning.”^[22]

The alcohol reading

The only toxicology sample was fluid from the chest cavity, not blood. It measured ethanol at 270 mg/dL; a presumptive cannabinoid result was not confirmed.^[20] Mitchell writes that this number “cannot, by itself, be treated as an accurate antemortem blood alcohol concentration,” because bacteria produce alcohol after death, especially in bodies recovered from water, and that he is “not convinced based upon the review of the investigative witness summaries or the post-mortem toxicology that Nolan Wells was too intoxicated to swim.”^[21] On this point the grand jury agrees: it called the toxicology “not particularly informative as decomposition fluid is an unreliable source.”^[22]

5. Horn Island’s Own Drowning Record

Separately from the medical dispute, Jackson County’s own Coroner’s Office responded to an open-records request — first reported by PEOPLE and covered by NewsNation and TheGrio — and found no recorded drowning deaths on Horn Island in the six years before Wells died (2020–2025). That figure describes how unusual a drowning has been at that specific location; it does not, on its own, establish what happened to Wells. Barrier islands in the Gulf Islands National Seashore do have a documented history of dangerous currents, and a six-year gap in one county’s records is a real, narrow data point — not proof either that drowning is implausible here or that it isn’t.^[3]

6. The National Drowning Data

Wells’ case is one death. The pattern around it is a real, government-measured national gap that existed before his death and has not closed. The CDC’s most recent Vital Signs report found Black Americans drowned at a higher rate than White Americans in every year from 2019 through 2022:

The gap is not uniform across age groups or settings. A separate CDC study covering 1999–2019 found the Black-vs-White drowning rate ratio peaks at 7.6× in swimming pools among 10-to-14-year-olds. Wells was 18 and died in open water, not a pool — the closest comparable figures are the natural-water ratios at ages 15–19 and 20–24 (2.0× and 1.4× the White rate, respectively):

One documented driver of the gap is unequal access to swimming instruction. In the same CDC survey, 36.8% of Black adults reported they cannot swim, versus 6.9% of White adults:

7. Federal Review: Requested, Not Granted

The Congressional Black Caucus’s August 12 letter asked the Department of Justice and FBI to review the case and determine whether federal jurisdiction, additional investigative resources, or a civil-rights investigation might be warranted. As of this report, the DOJ has confirmed only that it received the letter and is having it reviewed — it has not announced it opened a federal investigation, and a request for review is not evidence that one is underway.^[10] Separately, Mississippi Today has reported that a grand jury could still consider newly uncovered evidence and that Mississippi murder charges carry no state statute of limitations — a real legal fact that keeps the case open in principle, not a sign that a second presentation has actually been ordered.^[16]

8. The Street Response

Hundreds of people gathered in downtown Ocean Springs on September 27 — the second large protest since Wells’ death, after an initial July 12 march. Protesters carried signs and said his name; one attendee, 19-year-old Nicolas Madison, told a reporter at the July march that its purpose was simple: “to say his name.” A protester at the September 27 march, identified as Ms. Rachel, told TheSource: “Nolan Wells didn’t drown.”^[14] That is a stated belief, not a fact this report can confirm; it is reported here as the substance of the public response, not as a finding.

What’s Disputed or Unconfirmed

Restated plainly: whether the phone’s deleted data came from Wells’ own account or from other users’ Snapchat activity is disputed between the family’s forensic examiner and the DA, and neither side’s underlying file has been made public. How Wells got the blunt-force injury to the back of his head is unexplained in both autopsy reports and in the grand jury report. Whether he also had bruises on his lower back and left shoulder is disputed: the state report records the back as atraumatic, while Dr. Mitchell identified three probable, non-deep bruises in the state’s own photographs. The absence of water in the airways does not by itself rule drowning in or out; both pathologists call the cause and manner of death undetermined.^[20][21][22] Whether federal authorities will open any review at all remains unknown. None of this report’s data-driven sections — the national drowning statistics or the Horn Island record — determine what happened to Nolan Wells specifically; they describe real patterns this case sits inside, not a conclusion about this case.

How to Verify This Yourself

Watch both embedded videos above in full before adopting either account. Reference 2 and Reference 1 are the two competing on-the-record statements from September 24; read them side by side, not just this report’s summary of them. Both autopsy reports are public in full: the state medical examiner’s four-page report^[20] and Dr. Mitchell’s ten-page final report.^[21] Jackson County has also posted the redacted grand jury report itself for anyone who wants the underlying document rather than either side’s characterization of it.^[15] References 18 and 19 are the CDC’s own published reports, both downloadable directly from cdc.gov, if you want to check any number in the charts above against the source table yourself.

What You Can Do Right Now

Save the Nolan Wells verification and action checklist (PDF). It groups the two disputed statements, the federal-review request, and a set of real, no-cost ways to act on the drowning-data findings above — not just to follow this case.

On the drowning-data gap specifically: the American Red Cross and USA Swimming Foundation both run free or reduced-cost “Learn to Swim” programs^[19] aimed at closing exactly the access gap shown above, and many YMCA branches offer income-based scholarships for lessons. If you coach, teach, or parent, checking whether a child in your life has ever had formal swim instruction is a concrete, immediate action this data supports — independent of anything still unresolved in the Wells case itself.

On the case: read the primary documents yourself (the county’s grand jury report, the CBC’s letter, both September 24 statements) rather than a summary of a summary, and do not target or accuse any named private individual based on unverified online claims. Continued pressure for a documented answer — a released record, a federal response, a forensic file made public — is a legitimate form of civic action; harassment of anyone connected to the case is not, and several people have already faced criminal charges for threats made in this case’s name.

Implications: What This Means for Black America

Two separate things are true at once here, and collapsing them into one story does a disservice to both. First, whether Nolan Wells’ own death involved wrongdoing is a specific, unresolved factual question that depends on forensic evidence neither this report nor the public has fully seen. Second, the conditions his case unfolded in — a young Black man dead in water, a drowning finding immediately treated by much of the public as incomplete, and a real, decades-old, government-documented gap in swim access and drowning risk by race — are not in dispute. That gap didn’t begin with Wells’ death and won’t end with however his case resolves.

What communities can act on today does not require waiting on a grand jury, a DOJ letter, or a second autopsy: the swim-lesson access gap above is real, national, present in most cities, and closeable at the local level right now through the programs named in this report’s checklist. What communities can also do is insist that “undetermined” be reported as undetermined — not quietly upgraded to “drowning” by repetition — and treat a federal-review request the same way: a request, not a result, until an agency says otherwise. Holding officials to that precision, in this case and the next one, is itself a form of accountability that doesn’t depend on any single outcome here.

Kemetic Minds Analysis

The most useful measure of progress from here is still a documented change: the underlying forensic file made public by either side, an official federal response defining its scope, or a new prosecutorial decision built on verified new evidence. Two competing press conferences are not that; they are both real, both attributed, and both incomplete on their own.

The drowning-data gap charted above deserves to outlast this news cycle. It will still be true, and still be closeable, regardless of how the disputed cellphone evidence or the autopsy question in Wells’ specific case are ultimately resolved — and a community response built only around one case’s outcome would waste the one part of this story that’s fully verified and actionable today.

References

1. WLOX (September 24, 2026). Jackson County DA responds to claims made at press conference on Nolan Wells phone data. Secondary reporting, quoting the DA’s on-the-record statement.
2. WLOX (September 24, 2026). ‘Things were deleted’: Ben Crump, forensic expert announce cellphone findings, state autopsy results. Secondary reporting of the family legal team’s press conference.
3. NewsNation (2026). Official says no one has drowned on Horn Island, where Nolan Wells partied, in the past six years. Secondary reporting of a Jackson County Coroner’s Office open-records response.
4. CDC, MMWR Vital Signs (May 2024). Progress on Childhood Injury Prevention: Drowning. Primary government source for the by-race 2019-2022 rates and the national swim-skill survey.
5. TheSource (September 27, 2026). Nolan Wells: Protesters Demand Answers While Official Autopsy Showed No Water in Lungs. Secondary reporting.
6. WLOX (July 7, 2026). Timeline: here’s what we know about the disappearance and death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells. Secondary reporting.
7. CBS News (2026). GPS data tracks boat Mississippi teen Nolan Wells was on before he went missing. Secondary reporting of GPS records entered into the investigation.
8. Ben Crump Law (July 21, 2026). Ben Crump to reveal autopsy findings in Nolan Wells death, and press release of July 7, 2026, Ben Crump retained by Nolan Wells family. Primary source for the retention date and the July 22 announcement.
9. TheGrio (July 13, 2026). Nolan Wells Protest: Hundreds March for Transparency. Secondary reporting.
10. Congressional Black Caucus (August 12, 2026). Letter requesting DOJ and FBI review (PDF). Primary congressional correspondence.
11. NAACP (August 17, 2026). Office of General Counsel joins the family’s legal team. Primary organizational statement.
12. YouTube, Jackson County District Attorney’s Office (September 22, 2026). DA Angel Myers McIlrath statement on the grand jury decision. Primary source video.
13. Ben Crump Law (statement dated September 21, 2026). Family legal team’s response and announced next steps. Primary source for the team’s position.
14. TheSource (September 27, 2026). Same as Reference 5.
15. Jackson County District Attorney (posted September 22, 2026). Official release page linking the redacted grand jury report. Primary government document access.
16. Mississippi Today (September 22, 2026). Nolan Wells may have drowned, but questions remain: How? And why? Secondary reporting.
17. YouTube, Ben Crump Law (September 24, 2026). Attorney Ben Crump shares findings from forensic examination of Nolan Wells’ cell phone. Primary source video.
18. CDC, MMWR 70(24) (June 2021). Persistent Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Fatal Unintentional Drowning Rates Among Persons Aged ≤29 Years — United States, 1999–2019. Primary government source for the by-age, by-setting rate ratios.
19. American Red Cross and USA Swimming Foundation (accessed September 28, 2026). Free and reduced-cost “Learn to Swim” program directories. Primary organizational program information, cited in the checklist PDF.
20. Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, Staci Turner, MD (examination July 7, 2026; signed August 17, 2026). Report of Postmortem Examination, Nolan Xavier Wells, case ME26-0514 (PDF, released by the family’s attorneys September 24, 2026). Primary source.
21. Roger A. Mitchell Jr., MD, RAM Consulting (September 14, 2026). Final Report – Second Autopsy – Death of Nolan Xavier Wells (PDF). Primary source.
22. Jackson County Grand Jury (filed September 18, 2026). Grand Jury Report, In re: Death Investigation of Nolan Xavier Wells (redacted PDF), pp. 3–6. Primary court document.
23. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath (September 24, 2026). Statement on the Nolan Wells death investigation, published in full by WXXV News 25. Primary source.
24. Perwira S, Affrita TM, Tambunan E, Yudianto A (2021). Autopsy Findings on Decomposing Drowned Body: Identification of Specific Diagnostic Features of External, Internal, and Laboratory Examinations. Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences 9(C):218–221. Peer-reviewed case report.
25. Tyr A, Heldring N, Winskog C, Zilg B (2024). Diagnosing fatal drownings: A review of the postmortem findings. Forensic Science International 364:112251. Peer-reviewed.
26. PBS NewsHour (September 22, 2026). Mississippi grand jury finds no cause for charges in the July death of Nolan Wells. Secondary reporting of Sharpton’s funeral remarks.

Related Reading

• Nolan Wells: Data & Timeline Dashboard (interactive charts)
• Nolan Wells Update: No Indictment, Autopsy Questions, and What Happens Next
• Nolan Wells live updates and earlier developments

Methodology: This report compares both named parties’ September 24 on-the-record statements, the DA’s and family legal team’s public documents, congressional correspondence, and named news organizations’ reporting, alongside two CDC datasets cited directly to cdc.gov. The autopsy findings in section 4 are quoted directly from the state medical examiner’s report, Dr. Mitchell’s final report and the grand jury report, all of which Kemetic Minds read in full. Kemetic Minds did not examine the body, the tissue slides or the underlying cellphone extraction. The national drowning-data charts are real government statistics, not case-specific findings, and are labeled as context throughout. Analysis is labeled and separated from reporting. Coverage cutoff: September 27, 2026, evening Central time.

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