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The mysterious death of former Mississippi high school football star Nolan Wells has become a national controversy in recent weeks, and one of Alabama’s top players has been watching the story unfold from afar.
Bray Hubbard — currently an All-America safety for the Crimson Tide — starred at quarterback at Ocean Springs (Miss.) High School, graduating in 2023. Wells was a sophomore wide receiver for the Greyhounds during Hubbard’s senior year, and the Alabama standout remembered his former teammate always having a “smile on his face.”
“He was a great kid; he was a great teammate,” Hubbard said Wednesday during an appearance at SEC Media Days in Tampa. “… He was kind of like a brother to me, but the dude ran around with a smile on his face all the time. He was going to be a very successful football player. Loved that kid.”
Wells, who played at Southwest (Miss.) Community College last fall, was briefly missing and then found dead on Horn Island — just off the Mississippi Coast south of Ocean Springs — following a July 4 weekend outing with friends. His cause of death remains undetermined, though his parents have retained the services of noted civil rights attorney Ben Crump to help them discover what might have happened to their son.
Wells, who was 18, did not return to the mainland with his friends following the Horn Island trip, and was found dead two days later. The story has drawn national headlines due to the unusual nature of his disappearance, with friends telling police and reporters that Wells stayed behind on the island to speak with a girl — an account his parents find dubious.
“No, he wouldn’t. Nolan always stays with the group,” Elmore Wonsley, Nolan’s father, said, via CBS. “If you be with me, you come back with me. So that I don’t understand, and with me being a parent, if I was in that situation, I would have told them, ‘You’re going to get back on this boat with me because I don’t want to answer to your parents if something happens to you.’”
After local and state authorities conducted their own investigation and autopsy, Wells’ parents hired Crump — and have also gotten assistance from civil rights advocate Al Sharpton. Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick has also joined the cause, paying for a second autopsy conducted in what Crump termed a “ferocious search for the truth of what really happened to Nolan Wells.”
The results of the second autopsy were released Wednesday. Crump said the examination revealed a “red discoloration” in the tissue in the back of Wells’ head, though the reason was unknown.
Hubbard, meanwhile, has spent most of the summer in Tuscaloosa. He said supports Wells’ family and others in his hometown who have received so much national scrutiny.
“I hope they get to the bottom of what happened,” Hubbard said. “But I’m standing behind his family, standing behind my town. At the end of the day, nobody knows the town like the people that live in the town do. So obviously the town’s going to come together and support each other.”
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