Attorneys for Christine Wonsley, the mother of Nolan Wells, have subpoenaed several major social media and technology companies as they seek records tied to the 18-year-old’s online accounts amid continuing questions surrounding his death, according to court records.
The filings, obtained by ABC News and submitted last week in Mississippi State Chancery Court, request information from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — all owned by Meta — along with Snapchat, TikTok and Life360, a GPS location-tracking and family safety app.
The petition seeks messages, photos and videos sent or received through Wells’ accounts, as well as GPS location data and timestamps that could help his family better understand the circumstances surrounding his death.
Under the subpoenas, each company has 21 days from receipt to “produce and permit inspection and copying of all documents, electronically stored information, records, and tangible things designated below, and to deliver, mail, transmit, or make available for inspection said materials to counsel for Petitioner Christine Wonsley,” the court documents state.
ABC News said it contacted each of the companies named in the filings, but none had returned requests for comment.
Wells, a football player at Southwest Mississippi Community College, disappeared during a Fourth of July gathering with high school friends on Horn Island, a well-known undeveloped barrier island south of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, officials said.
His body was found on July 6. Authorities have said they suspect Wells drowned, though the investigation remains ongoing.
The subpoenas follow Wonsley’s July 10 interview on ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” where she said the family tracked Wells’ phone and that, when she retrieved it from his friends, it appeared some text messages and Snapchat messages had been deleted.
It is unclear who had Wells’ phone in the days between July 4 and July 10.
“When we finally got his phone, me and my sister went through the phone. We went in his Snapchat. He had two accounts. Absolutely nothing,” Christine Wonsley said. “It wasn’t even 24 hours, which is how long videos and pictures stay in Snapchat … even my sister was like ‘Yeah, that’s suspicious.'”
Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter said there was no initial indication of a crime, but he stressed that investigators were “working diligently to determine exactly what occurred.”
Ledbetter also said the sheriff’s office welcomed the family’s independent investigation.
The official autopsy report from the state Medical Examiner’s Office and the toxicology tests are still pending. A private autopsy commissioned by Wells’ family preliminarily ruled his cause and manner of death as “undetermined pending investigation.”
“This has been a difficult journey. Losing a child, it truly breaks your heart. It is a pain that is just you can’t measure it. Especially someone like Nolan, who brought so much joy and light and life to everyone,” Wonsley said during a press conference on July 22.
“You don’t find too many genuine people like him. So to lose that light at such a young age, under these circumstances, has been absolutely difficult. Which is why we’ve gone this route. There’s so many people out in the public asking all of these questions, but the only question that we have is what happened to our son,” she added.
ABC News’ Jeana Fermi and Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
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