A newly surfaced Nolan Wells audio recording captures a panicked Sea Tow call after his boat started taking on water. The call adds a recorded account to the Nolan Wells death investigation and puts the boat emergency back at the center of the timeline.
Sea Tow call details
The caller told the Sea Tow dispatcher that the boat was sinking because the bilge pump was not working and asked for help to “unsank” the boat and get towed back to shore. The dispatcher asked for membership details and then pressed for GPS coordinates and the number of people on board.
The caller said there were no children and no one over the age of 21. The dispatcher then repeated the question about the total number of people aboard before calling the Sea Tow captain and saying the people onboard were panicking.
Nolan Wells on Horn Island
The group had been partying at Horn Island on July 4, and friends later said Nolan Wells chose to stay back at the island after the boat was towed back. They returned to the mainland without the 18-year-old.
Two days later, Wells’s body was found washed up at the shoreline. Mississippi officials have suggested that he drowned, but his family and Ben Crump continue to question that conclusion, and the family has also conducted an independent autopsy.
What the audio adds
Jerry Adkerson, the operator’s grandfather, told the captain that the situation had already been handled, and the captain said the people onboard did not need assistance. That gap between the emergency call and the later account is now part of what the released audio puts under closer scrutiny.
The recording does not answer what happened after the boat was towed back from Horn Island, but it does give a step-by-step account of the distress call itself: the sinking boat, the failed bilge pump, the GPS exchange, and the panic on the line.
