A mother on Friday pleaded for anyone to come forward with information about what happened to her son, Nolan Wells, a young Black man whose body was found on an island off the coast of Mississippi after he traveled there over the Fourth of July weekend with three white friends.
“We just want to know what happened and why our baby didn’t come home,” Christine Wonsley, choking back tears, said at a news conference about her son.
The death of Wells has become a social media flashpoint, fueled by questions about race in the US.
The body of Wells, 18, was found on 6 July on the north-western tip of Horn Island, a long, thin barrier island with a beach along Mississippi’s Gulf coast. He had visited the island and went missing on the Independence Day holiday of 4 July with a group of friends from his high school in nearby Ocean Springs, Mississippi.