What happened to Nolan Wells?

For more than a month, I followed the story of Nolan Wells like much of the country did.

I watched the interviews. I listened to the experts. I heard the questions, theories and explanations. From Roland Martin to other national media outlets, Nolan’s name continued to appear across my timeline and in my search history.

And then I stopped listening. I stopped watching. I had enough. There was something unsettling about consuming a family’s pain day after day. Honestly, it was starting to consume me.

At times, I wondered whether Our Times should join the conversation. But I also wrestled with what we could add.

Newsrooms have long operated under the old saying, “if it bleeds, it leads.” In today’s digital media environment, tragedy can quickly become content—another trending topic competing for clicks, views and engagement.

I didn’t want Nolan Wells to become that for us.

Then last week, at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention, Nolan’s parents sat just a few feet away from us.

And the headline became someone’s son.

His mother, Christine Wells-Wonsley, told us about a young man who loved God, made the people around him feel accepted, and was preparing to return to school and football. She talked about Nolan Facetiming her while cooking salmon for the family, asking whether he’d seasoned it enough, the day before he went missing.

His father, Elmore Wonsley, remembered a son who was rarely separated from his phone—even waking up many mornings with the phone next to his head. These weren’t details about an investigation. They were details about Nolan.

Nolan was 18 when he disappeared during a July 4 trip to Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi coast. His body was later recovered on the island.

His parents came to NABJ last week still asking a fundamental question: What happened to their son?

They described searching for Nolan themselves and struggling to determine which law enforcement agency would take their report. They questioned inconsistencies they say remain in accounts of what happened that day. And they described the pain of being attacked publicly simply for continuing to demand answers.

Then Rev. Al Sharpton took the microphone.

What troubled him, he said, was that law enforcement had already said there was no foul play. “The thing that jogged me from a civil rights point of view,” Sharpton said, was that “law enforcement said there is no foul play.”

Sharpton wasn’t telling the audience what happened to Nolan. In fact, he made clear that he didn’t know. His concern was that questions remained, and he wasn’t willing to leave those questions unanswered. “I don’t know what happened,” Sharpton said. “But I got your history in Mississippi.”

And with that, he placed the questions surrounding Nolan’s death inside a history that is impossible to ignore.

For some Black Americans, Mississippi is more than a location on a map. It holds a central place in the history of the Deep South, where slavery was followed by generations of Jim Crow segregation, racial terror and organized efforts to deny Black people their rights.

Mississippi was among the Southern states Black families left in large numbers during the Great Migration, seeking greater safety and opportunity elsewhere. It would also become a central battleground of the Civil Rights Movement, where Black Mississippians and activists challenged a system built to keep them from voting, attending integrated schools and participating fully in public life.

For me, I knew the history Sharpton was referring to long before I understood all its complexities. I learned about Emmett Till as a pre-teen in Sunday School. Till was 14 years old when he traveled from Chicago to Mississippi in 1955 and was brutally murdered. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, refused to allow the country to look away from what had happened to her son.

Nolan Wells’ story is not Emmett Till’s story, and drawing conclusions about what happened to Nolan based solely on Mississippi’s racial history would be irresponsible.

But history does help explain something else: why trust cannot always be demanded from families and communities without transparency accompanying it.

Nolan’s parents are not asking the public to decide what happened to their son. At NABJ, they repeatedly said they want a thorough investigation, transparency and answers.

“We’ve never blamed anyone,” Christine told the room. “We’ve never tried to smear anyone.”

Their attorney, Ben Crump reinforced that point. “We want you to do for him what you would do for your child,” he said.

Sitting in that room, I understood why Our Times needed to tell this story after all.

Not because Nolan Wells was trending. Not because we have the answers his parents are seeking. But, because before Nolan was a headline, an investigation or a debate playing out across social media, he was a son who cooked for his mother, spread joy to those around him, and was so attached to his phone his father would find it beside his head when he fell asleep.

Sometimes journalism’s responsibility isn’t to rush to an answer. It is to keep asking the question.  When Christine and Elmore left the stage and the audience cleared the room, we still didn’t know what happened. Days later, as I write this story, we still don’t know.

And that is why the questions matter.