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Nolan Wells Update: It’s ‘Pretty Shocking’ No One Saw Him Before His Death, Says Crime Investigator
Questions surrounding the disappearance and death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells during a Fourth of July outing to Mississippi’s Horn Island still remain unanswered.
The Mississippi college football player traveled to Horn Island with a group of friends to celebrate Independence Day, and the boat left around 9:56 a.m., according to CBS affiliate WLOX.
Wells was last seen near the island around 3 p.m. One of his friends, Tracestin Shepherd, told Good Morning America that the teen wanted to stay behind at a party because he met a girl, and it seemed like “he really did like her.”
Wells disappeared, and his body was found in the water near the island two days later following an extensive search.
Things aren’t quite adding up to Sheryl McCollum, a crime scene investigator who has worked on cases that include Tupac Shakur and the Zodiac Killer.
“There were hundreds of people out there,” McCollum told NewsNation in an interview published Friday, July 17.
“You’ve seen the video and the photographs,” she said. “How somebody did not see him is pretty shocking to me, especially if he left one group that knows him to go with another group that clearly knows him.”
Wells’ family has pushed back on the claim that the teen voluntarily stayed behind on the island, and they’ve hired civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump to conduct a separate investigation into his death.
The three friends who accompanied the teen have retained attorneys.
“I don’t understand how he got separated from everybody that he knows,” McCollum said. “Even if I did not know him, if I’m just taking a video of the whole crowd, I could have captured him.”
McCollum said another important aspect in the case will be GPS data.
Tracking the boat “is critical,” she said, because the people Wells was with “already made a statement.”
“They already talked to family. They already talked to law enforcement,” McCollum noted. “If their story does not match completely with what that boat did, then they’re gonna have a problem.”
