Does Leaving Nolan Wells Behind Count As A Crime?

Nobody has to push someone off a boat for a death to become a crime. Prosecutors may be about to test that with the Nolan Wells case. 
Nolan was eighteen, a wide receiver at Southwest Mississippi Community College from Ocean Springs, Mississippi. On the Fourth of July, he and a group of friends took a boat out to Horn Island, an uninhabited barrier island roughly ten miles off the Mississippi coast. He was last seen there around three in the afternoon. His friends left without him. A National Park Service ranger recovered his body two mornings later, off the island's northwestern tip. 
Officials initially said they believed Nolan drowned and that they didn't suspect foul play, before the autopsy was even complete. That same office has since said investigators are working diligently to determine exactly what occurred, a statement that sits uneasily next to the first one. 
District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath has told the family the case will go to a grand jury once the investigation wraps. What twelve jurors do with a death that has never been formally classified, and whether leaving a person behind on an island can amount to a crime on its own, is the question at the center of this one. 
Attorney Ben Crump says Nolan's friends had his phone after leaving the island, and that messages had been deleted by the time the family got it back. Crump's experts and Jackson County investigators have agreed to examine the device together. The family has also arranged its own independent autopsy in Washington, D.C., separate from the one performed by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner's Office. Neither result has been released. 
Two autopsies, a missing chunk of texts, and a legal theory nobody has tested yet. 
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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice. 
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