\n<\/p>\n
On 4 July, Nolan Xavier Wells, an 18-year-old from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and a group of friends went on a boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island about 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf coast. Wells\u2019s friends all returned back home that evening, but Wells did not, prompting his mother to report him missing and ask for help on social media, triggering a two-day search that caught national attention. That search came to an end on Monday, when a body was found on the island. On Tuesday, Wells\u2019s mother, Christine Wonsley, identified the body as belonging to Wells.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis father, our family, friends and I are absolutely devastated,\u201d Wonsley wrote in a Facebook post. \u201cMy heart is broken for my sweet son who was always willing to cheer and uplift others. Nolan was a special soul, God took his time creating our son.\u201d<\/p>\n
No cause of death has been reported and an investigation is ongoing. Wells, a college freshman at Southwest Mississippi community college, would have turned 19 next month.<\/p>\n
While the search was still ongoing, Wonsley posted photos<\/a> of Wells and the rest of the Horn Island group on Facebook. Social media users quickly suggested that Wells\u2019s disappearance was due to a racial incident: per the photos, Wells was Black, and the other three men on the boat were white.<\/p>\n National civil rights organizations have commented on Wells\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cHis name was Nolan Xavier Wells. He was 18. He was loved. He deserved more time,\u201d the NAACP wrote on Instagram. \u201cOur hearts are with Nolan\u2019s family, friends, and community as they navigate this devastating loss. Every Black man deserves the chance to grow old.\u201d<\/p>\n Jackson county\u2019s sheriff, John Ledbetter, said on Tuesday that it was \u201cstill a very active investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On 4 July, Nolan Xavier Wells, an 18-year-old from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and a group of friends went on a boat trip to Horn Island, a barrier island about 10 miles off the Mississippi Gulf coast. Wells\u2019s friends all returned back home that evening, but Wells did not, prompting his mother to report him missing 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Wells\u2019s friends all returned back home that evening, but Wells did not, prompting his mother to report him missing…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34085,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34083\/revisions\/34085"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}