No one to be charged in black teen’s death

A grand jury determined that there wasn’t evidence to warrant charges in the death of Nolan Wells, a black college student whose body was found after a July 4 boating trip and party on an island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Wells’ family swiftly pushed back on the findings. District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath, who has overseen the investigation into the 18-year-old’s death, announced the grand jury’s findings late on Monday, after months of intense speculation about how Wells went missing from the bustling party and why the friends who ferried him to Horn Island left without him.

The grand jury found no evidence of criminal conduct and said that based on various factors, including the position and condition of Wells’ body when found two days after he was last seen, his death was “consistent with drowning”. Although the state medical examiner’s office’s autopsy results haven’t been made public, the grand jury report said that it and a separate autopsy conducted by a forensic pathologist hired by Wells’ family found bruising on the back of his head but couldn’t determine the cause of death.