Late-night host Byron Allen has donated $100,000 to an online funding drive for the family of 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells, who was found dead last week after going missing while on a boat trip with friends in Mississippi.
“My prayers are with this beautiful family during this very difficult time,” Allen told Variety. “My hope is that Nolan Wells’ loved ones, and humanity, get all the answers that we deserve.”
The media mogul is the latest celebrity to come forward supporting the family’s demand for answers after Wells did not return from a July 4 outing to Horn Island off the Gulf Coast. He joins several high-profile members of the Black community in doing so, fueled by the mysterious nature of Wells’s death. As of late Sunday afternoon, nearly $622,000 had been raised toward the family’s $750,000 funding goal. Other contributors included comedian Lil Rel Howery and Auburn football quarterback Deuce Knight.
Actor and producer Tyler Perry is chipping in for the 18-year-old’s funeral, and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is helping fund an independent autopsy commissioned by Wells’s family. Spike Lee has also registered support. The Rev. Al Sharpton will officiate at Wells’s funeral, and his parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, have hired civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump to investigate.
AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
Christine Wonsley, mother of Nolan Xavier Wells, reacts as she speaks during a news conference at National Action Network headquarters in Harlem with Al Sharpton, left, on Friday. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
“As a son of the South and a person who to this day questions the death of my nephew in a Louisiana prison, and as an advocate who has been fighting for years to get answers for Marcia Williams about what happened to her son, Terrance, in Florida, I know what it’s like to not have the answers that loved ones so desperately need,” Perry said in a statement on Instagram. “The agony is debilitating.”
Wells’s parents expressed their own version of that agony at a press conference with Crump on Friday in New York City.
“We just want to know what happened and why our baby didn’t come home,” Christine Wonsley said, flanked by Crump and Sharpton.
Mississippi’s particular history of racial violence has undermined the Black family’s trust in law enforcement’s efforts, Crump said, and they feel the facts they’ve been given don’t add up. His friends said Wells opted to remain on the island, but they took his phone and keys with them when they left, Crump said. When the Wonsleys got it back, they said several social media text messages had been deleted and that they’ll hire an expert to retrieve them.
Jackson County Sheriff
Nolan Xavier Wells. (Jackson County Sheriff)
About 200 people were on the uninhabited beach island celebrating the holiday that day, Crump said. His family reported him missing when he didn’t return. After a two-day search involving the U.S. Coast Guard, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources and the National Park Service, Wells’s body was found early Monday at the northwestern tip of the 11-mile-long barrier island, which lies about 7 miles off the Mississippi coast near the Alabama line. While authorities have said there are no overt signs of foul play, they emphasized that the investigation is still active and are asking anyone who saw Wells on the island that day to come forward to tell police what they saw. The friends who were with him are cooperating fully with the investigation, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said.
Wells, who would have turned 19 next month, had just wrapped up his freshman year at Southwest Mississippi Community College, where he played wide receiver on the football team. His friends said he had chosen to remain on the island, telling them he would return on another boat with friends later. His parents said that was not like him.
“Nolan always stays with the group,” Elmore Wonsley told “CBS Mornings” on Friday. “I don’t believe he decided to stay on the island by himself. It just doesn’t — that’s not his character.”
With News Wire Services