Al Sharpton vows to keep advocating for Nolan Wells’ family

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, September 02, 2026

Lawyers for civil rights leader and National Action Network founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton, have rejected a threatened defamation lawsuit from attorneys representing three friends of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, who was found dead near Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast on July 6 after traveling there by boat with a group of friends on July 4.

“Nolan Xavier Wells was eighteen years old. He went to an island on the Fourth of July and did not come home. His body was recovered from the water two days later. Seven weeks on, the cause and manner of his death remain undetermined. His mother and father still do not know how their son died. That is the subject of this matter,” Sharpton’s attorneys state in a 15-page response Monday to an Aug. 21 pre-suit demand letter from attorneys for three of Wells’ friends, Morgan Seymour, Jax Pitalo and Warren Hudson.

In their 19-page demand letter, the attorneys for Morgan, Jax and Warren say they were part of a group of 30 individuals, including Wells, who traveled in three separate boats to Horn Island on Independence Day. They then provide an account of how the three friends spent their time at the island until they left and realized Wells was missing.

They allege that even though their clients worked to help locate Wells when they realized he was missing, Sharpton, through public statements, suggested that Morgan, Jax and Warren were involved in Wells’ death, hindered prosecution and tampered with evidence. Specifically, the letter cites remarks Sharpton made during a July 14 TMZ interview and an Aug. 19 online vigil for Wells, according to ABC7. They have demanded that Sharpton issue an apology, as well as the retraction and removal of his public remarks from which his defamatory statements can be inferred.

In a statement from NAN to The Christian Post, Sharpton also made it clear that he would not stop advocating for the Wells family.

“This is not going to distract us from the question that brought us here: What happened to Nolan Wells?” Sharpton said. “His parents buried their 18-year-old son without knowing how or why he died. They asked me to stand with them, and I will continue to stand with them until they get the answers they deserve.”

Sharpton’s attorneys from the firms Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch and Wylie Stecklow PLLC argue, however, that because the defamation allegations are grounded in inference, they did not meet the standard required to qualify as defamation under Mississippi law.

“The Letter runs nineteen pages and scarcely engages it. The threatened litigation will not be a one-way proceeding. If Messrs. Hudson, Pitalo, and Seymour file suit, Reverend Sharpton will not merely defend it. He will pursue all affirmative relief against the parties and counsel responsible for commencing or maintaining legally and factually baseless litigation directed at his protected speech,” Sharpton’s lawyers declared. 

According to local news station WLBT3, Wells’ autopsy was completed in July. The state’s medical examiner’s office has not publicly released the report, which is being reviewed by a grand jury. 

Nolan Wells, a popular football player at Southwest Mississippi Community College, was found dead near Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast on July 6 after traveling there by boat with a group of friends to celebrate the July 4 holiday. Local investigators informed the family that no foul play was involved in the suspected accidental drowning, but his grieving parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, aren’t convinced.

“It is worth stating plainly what the Letter asks. It asks Reverend Sharpton to apologize to three young men for having asked why an eighteen-year-old died. It asks him to retract questions that Nolan’s own mother raised on national television four days before he repeated them,” Sharpton’s lawyers said.

“It asks him to delete a prayer vigil. And it asks this allegedly on behalf of clients who have themselves established a public fundraising campaign, sat for recorded media interviews, criticized Nolan’s mother publicly, and released their private communications to the press—while the family whose son is dead, and whom Reverend Sharpton is accused of exploiting, has asked him for none of it. They have not asked him to stop. They have asked him to keep going,” they continued.

“There is no legal remedy for the fact that Reverend Sharpton’s questions are uncomfortable. There is a remedy for defamation, but it requires a defamatory statement, and the Letter does not identify one. The threatened claims … depend upon statements Reverend Sharpton did not make, meanings the Letter itself supplies and theories of fault and damages that cannot be reconciled with settled defamation law.”