The Nolan Wells case has taken a shocking turn as the name of a mystery girl, Katie, has emerged amid the investigation. The United Cajun Navy was assisting in the search for Wells when he went missing, and incident commander Josh Gill had previously told Nola.com that the teen was last seen “hanging out with a girl”.
The Ocean Springs, Mississippi, teen was found dead in the water on the northwest end of Horn Island on Monday morning, July 6. Wells went missing on July 4 after taking a boat to the island with friends. The search for the teen was called off after a body was found by a park ranger on Monday, July 6.
Wells’ parents have said that they have heard two versions of his final hours, one of which says he stayed on Horn Island with a girl named Katie. The other version claims he returned to the boat.
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“We’re still grieving—like it hasn’t even been that long—4 days since he’s been found,” Wells’ mother, Christine Wonsley, said in an interview with Roland Martin. “I’m in a mindset right now where I’m trying to protect my family. I’m trying to protect my peace.”
Who is Katie?
Wells went out to Horn Island with a group of friends during the Fourth of July weekend. All of his friends returned home, but Wonsley received a call from his friends alerting her that Wells was missing.
“They said that he wanted to stay and hang out with this girl named Katie. And also, and this was the initial conversation, me being alerted to him being missing. It was, ‘Oh, well, Katie’s also missing, but we don’t know who she is.’ Like, that was our first time kind of seeing her type of thing,” she said, recalling the phone call.
While rumors claimed Katie was missing too, someone who knows her took to Facebook to confirm that Katie “made it home because she was on another boat and with different people” and was “safe.” The person said that Katie had a conversation with Wells and assumed he was “getting ready to get on the boat he came out in” because she “assumed the “friends” telling him to get on the boat wouldn’t have left him.”
Attorney Ben Crump, who has been hired by Wells’ family, said that a young woman said Wells had been speaking with her on Horn Island and told her he was planning to go back to get on his friends’ boat. However, Wells’ friends claimed that he was going to stay back and talk to the woman.
Wells’ friend, Jayvon Williams, who was at Horn Island on July 4, told the Biloxi Sun Herald that he last saw Wells after 4 pm, hanging out with a girl and other friends, adding that both left their phones on the boat that Wells took to the island.
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“The fact that you have the young lady who said that Nolan said he was going to get back on the boat with the boys, and then the boys said no, Nolan told them that he was going to stay with the girl. Which one is it? Somebody must not be telling the truth,” Crump told Martin. “And again, we cannot overstate it enough. What 18-year-old teenager says, ‘I’m going to stay behind on the island and don’t ask for their cell phone.'”
Wells’ father, Elmore Wonsley, said of his son, “He had too much at stake. He had a plan for his life. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew what he had to do come that following Monday, which was to get down to business so he can get his future started. So, for someone to tell me that Nolan decided to stay on the island to chase a girl. No one is going to get me to believe that.”
Autopsy results for Wells are pending. HIs cause of death remains unknown.
