A recording that was recently released by officials revealed a frantic call from a boat involved in the Nolan Wells death investigation in Mississippi. The call was made by a teen on a boat on Horn Island on July 4 about 4 pm to a private towing company, Sea Tow, according to Wave3.
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“I want to get this boat unsank and towed back, yes,” the teen says. He asks for the boat to be towed to Fort Bayou launch, and mentions that there were about seven people on board the boat.
The dispatcher then speaks with a captain, who claimed that he was already on the phone with a man who owned the boat – a relative of the teen who called.
“It sounds like a bunch of kids on board on Horn Island,” the dispatcher tells the captain. “He’s saying the boat is sinking and he’s on Horn Island… It’s just unfortunate, he’s just a kid… there’s a lot going on… I’m guessing they’re all under 18… He wants you guys to go out there and un-pump the boat and then tow it in?”
The captain says that the boat’s owner told him that the teens didn’t “need any help right now, but if something changes, he’ll call me back.”
The dispatcher tries to transfer the teen to the captain, but the call appears to disconnect.
“So the bilge is basically a pump that releases water from your boat when water comes in. So I opened the back hatch and there’s water up to the batteries. And that is obviously not good,” recalled Hudson.
“There’s water almost coming over the transom, which is where your motors sit and which is by the stern, in the back part of the boat. So obviously we were in an emergency. We’re trying to save the boat,” he continued.
“It’s not like we didn’t ask Nolan or we just left Nolan. Nolan decided to stay on the island with the girl that he was with. And the girl is a witness to that too,” he added.
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Wells, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, 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.
At the beginning, one can hear commotion in the background as music plays. The Sea Tow dispatcher then answers the call.
The teen can be heard saying in the call, “Hey, we’re at the west tip of Horn, and our bilge pump stopped working. We’re sinking. Can y’all please come?”
The dispatcher asks how far the water is coming up in the boat. “It’s coming up… we’re just sinking. I don’t know. We’re going down though,” the teen replies.
“And is everyone on board and in good health otherwise?” asks the dispatcher.
Listen to the call here: https://x.com/NateAdams5k/status/2081895496755351970?s=20
“Yeah, yeah, everyone is on board,” the caller says.
The caller then gives the dispatcher the boat’s GPS coordinates, which are just off the northwest tip of Horn Island.
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“What do you want to do? Do you want to be towed back?” the dispatcher asks.
Sea Tow later said that it did not end up towing the boat, according to Wave3.
Warren Hudson, who claimed to be Wells’ “best friend” and was on Horn Island with him before he died, told Brandon Tatum, a YouTuber and former police officer, in an interview that they were dealing with a boat emergency and Wells willingly stayed behind with a girl he was with.
Hudson explained that there were issues with the boat and that the “bilge wouldn’t pump.”
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An independent autopsy commissioned by Wells’ family was inconclusive, Ben Crump previously announced. The autopsy found the teen’s cause and manner of death to be “undetermined” pending further investigation.
