By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
A grand jury in Mississippi has declined to bring criminal charges in the death of Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old whose body was found days after he traveled by boat to Horn Island with friends over the Fourth of July weekend.
The local district attorney told reporters the panel reviewed the evidence available to it and found it insufficient to support a criminal case. The district attorney also characterized the finding as a rejection of months of online speculation that race played a role in Wells's death — speculation that spread widely on social media long before any official findings were released.
Wells's case drew national attention over the summer, and NBC News, CBS News and ABC News each confirmed the grand jury's decision this week. None of the available reporting details the specific evidence the panel weighed, and the precise circumstances of how Wells died remain unclear in the public record.
The grand jury's decision closes the door on criminal prosecution. It does not, on its own, answer the questions that drove so much public attention to a Mississippi island most Americans had never heard of before this summer.
[Editor's note: The evidence reviewed by the grand jury and the exact circumstances of Wells's death have not been detailed in available source reporting and should not be assumed or embellished.]
Read the footnotes. The story's always in the footnotes.
— Compiled from reporting by NBC News, CBS News and ABC News.
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