DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — At a church service Sunday, a prominent civil rights attorney addressed the death of a young man off the Mississippi coast.
Nolan Wells took a boat trip with friends on July Fourth, but he never returned and was later found dead.
Channel 2’s Bryan Mims said the pastor is also questioning the investigation.
“And still nobody has been arrested, nobody has been charged,” Pastor Dr. Jamal Bryant of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church said.
He said he couldn’t look away from the heartbreak in Mississippi.
Bryant says his church and all of America should bear witness and demand prompt answers.
“i think there’s go to be a greater sense of community. This is not a Mississippi issue. It is a Black America issue,” he said. “So we stand in community with this family, who’s going through such an egregious tragedy.”
His name was Nolan Wells, 18 years old, a college football player.
On July 4, he took a trip with three friends, all of them white, to an uninhabited island off the coast of Mississippi.
They returned. He never did. Two days later, he was found dead on the island’s beach.
“There are so many red flags on the field, that they returned, his friends came back without him, but with his phone.” Bryant said.
With Mississippi’s fraught racial history, the teen’s family — distrustful of state law enforcement — hired noted civil rights attorney Ben Crump to investigate.
Crump spoke on video to pastor Bryant’s congregation: “His family is not accepting this suggestion that it was just an accidental drowning.”
And they also don’t buy the claim that Nolan told his buddies to leave without him.
Crump says he’s hiring as many investigators as he can, and the family has commissioned an independent autopsy with no ties to Mississippi.
“We’re in Mississippi. These are three young white men. Nolan was the only Black man,” Crump said. “Reverend Bryant, had the roles been reversed, we now this investigation would be going differently.”
The sheriff of Jackson County, Mississippi, says Wells’ friends have been cooperative and, so far, investigators don’t suspect foul play.
He says official autopsy results could take weeks.
Bryant says a memorial service for wells is tentatively planned for next week in Mississippi, and he plans to be there.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]