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A lawyer for the family of Nolan Wells revealed the final text message the college athlete sent before his dead body was found face down in the water after a July 4 boating trip.
Wells, 18, wrote “Thank you” to his Auntie Gabby at around 8:30 p.m. on July 3, civil rights attorney Ben Crump said at a press conference Thursday.
“And what his parents and family shared with us, this was common because… Nolan was like many teenagers, they don’t use their mother and father text messaging, they use Snapchat,” Crump revealed.
The prominent attorney said “282 pages” of Snapchat messages from Wells’ friend group were also uncovered after the tragic teen’s phone was examined.
Wells went missing after an Independence Day boat party with a group of pals on Horn Island, Mississippi, and his body was found two days later.
Though a grand jury ruled Wells’ boating death was “consistent with drowning” with no signs of foul play, his family says they are still fighting “for justice.”
A 23-person grand jury passed down the decision on Friday, declaring that it found no evidence that a crime resulted in Wells’ death.
“The Grand Jury finds that the position of, the condition of, time of discovery, and location of Mr. Wells’ body is consistent with drowning,” reads the grand jury report, which was filed in Jackson County.
“There is absolutely no evidence to support the allegations that Nolan’s death and disappearance were racially motivated,” Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath said in a video message after the ruling.
But Wells’ mother, Christine Wells Wonsley, broke down in tears at a press conference Tuesday and explained she and Wells’ father, Elmore Wonsley, “do not believe” that their son “simply and accidentally drowned.”
“Despite the grand jury’s decision, Elmore, our family and I will continue to fight for justice and I know all those who have supported us will do the same,” she said.
The grand jury reviewed results from autopsies carried out by both the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office and an independent pathologist previously hired by the family before making its ruling.
A witness also testified under oath to the grand jury that he saw Wells slip “awkwardly” off the side of a boat but couldn’t definitively say whether he struck his head. The unidentified witness added that Wells didn’t appear injured and carried on socializing.
Ultimately, “There was bruising on the back of Mr. Wells’ head which was not a fatal injury. Further, the Grand Jury found no evidence of any fatal injury or organic disease to Mr. Wells’ body,” the decision states. 
The Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s 3-page autopsy report, which listed his cause and manner of death as undetermined, was also released by Crump and his team on Thursday.
Crump, as well as Liza Park, a senior attorney in Crump’s office, pointed out that Wells’ autopsy showed he had no water in his lungs, airways, or GI tract despite the grand jury finding the teen’s death was “consistent with drowning.”
“What this means is that there’s no water in the stomach, there’s no water in the lungs, there’s no water in the throat, and yet the grand jury … what they want to determine is an accidental drowning,” Park said at the press conference.
Dr. Mary Jumbelic, a board-certified forensic pathologist and former Chief Medical Examiner of Onondaga County, New York, told The Post that the absence of water could indicate “dry drowning,” where the airway spasms shut before water is inhaled.
His “undetermined” cause of death was likely ruled because drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion — there were no apparent witnesses to his death, and Wells’ decomposing body lacked any obvious signs of deep trauma.
“The other thing is you have to make sure you just rule out everything else that it could be. Rule out blunt trauma, sharp trauma, asphyxia, anything untoward like that,” Jumbelic said.
“Now, with that in mind, if you’ve done all these things and you don’t find water in the lungs and stomach, there’s something called a dry drowning, and that just means that you don’t get a lot of water in your lungs because you almost have an asphyxial process in your upper airway before you’ve breathed in a lot of water,” she said.
“So it’s a drowning death, if you will, but not because the water is flushing into your nose and your airway and showing up in your lungs.”
Without any solid information from witnesses on how Wells could have drowned, the medical examiner would not “have much to go on.”
“I think the reason they make the determination ‘undetermined ’ is because, in the event that they don’t have anything witnessed, they don’t have solid information,” Jumbelic said.
“Without that information, they don’t have much to go on. And then the fact that the body’s decomposing isn’t going to have as much information on bruising on the skin.”
Wells, who played football for Southwest Mississippi Community College, was discovered dead in the water two days after he vanished during the July 4 boat trip with friends.
His pals have been subjected to a campaign of unfounded conspiracy theories and harassment from amateur online sleuths since that fateful day. 
The grand jury report called any such attacks on the group of Wells’ friends who traveled on three boats — the Triton, the Palm Beach, and the Tideline — or their families to be “malicious,” “false” and “have no truth in fact or evidence.”

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