In a bid to uncover the truth behind the tragic death of Mississippi teenager Nolan Wells, Rev. Al Sharpton has announced a $50,000 reward for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. This development arrives as attorney Ben Crump prepares to unveil preliminary findings from an independent autopsy, potentially shedding light on the circumstances surrounding the 18-year-old’s untimely passing.

Crump is set to disclose these findings at the highly anticipated 117th NAACP National Convention in Chicago. During this event, he will stand alongside Wells’ parents, Christine and Elmore Wonsley, as the family’s legal team presents the results of their independent inquiry for the first time.

This announcement follows closely on the heels of a resolution passed by the NAACP, calling for a thorough and transparent investigation into Wells’ death. The organization has urged local, state, and federal authorities, including the U.S. Department of Justice, to take action to ensure that justice is served.

Renewed interest in this case has been sparked by the release of a previously unseen video by TMZ. The footage, reportedly filmed during a July 4 gathering on Horn Island, shows a scene of boats and revelers in the water, briefly focusing on an individual purported to be Wells. However, News Media has not independently confirmed the video’s authenticity, the date it was recorded, or the identity of the person depicted.

Wells disappeared July 4 after traveling by boat with friends to Horn Island, a barrier island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, to celebrate Independence Day. Search crews spent two days looking for the teenager before a National Park Service ranger found his body near the island’s northwestern tip on July 6. Authorities have not announced a cause or manner of death, and the investigation remains ongoing.

The official autopsy has not yet been released, making Wednesday’s announcement the first independent medical findings expected to be shared publicly.

The case has drawn growing national attention, with prominent civil rights leaders and public figures rallying behind Wells’ family, including Crump, Sharpton, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and filmmaker Tyler Perry.

Along with Crump, Sharpton has repeatedly called for a thorough investigation, though he has cautioned against drawing premature conclusions.

“We cannot say it was racist, but we cannot say it was not racist,” Sharpton said during Wells’ funeral. “So let’s not judge either way until all the evidence is in.”

Sharpton also questioned why Wells’ cellphone and keys were found with his friends, why they did not immediately contact law enforcement after realizing he was missing and why local officials appeared quick to dismiss the possibility of foul play.

During Wells’ funeral Monday, Sharpton announced a $50,000 reward through the National Action Network for information leading to an arrest and conviction, saying someone at the July 4 gathering knows what happened.

“He was not on that island by himself,” Sharpton said. “Somebody saw something and knows something. So I didn’t come to make money. I came to give money. Stand up and tell the truth.”

The Associated Press reported that Perry later pledged to help fund the reward in addition to paying for Wells’ funeral. Crump has also said the local prosecutor agreed to present the completed investigation to a grand jury once it is finished and that the family was still awaiting the results of the independent autopsy following Monday’s funeral.

As the family continues pressing for answers, News Media has filed public records requests with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources’ Marine Patrol seeking 911 calls, dispatch records, body-camera footage, incident reports, radio communications, vessel logs and other records related to the response to Wells’ disappearance and death.

News Media has also reached out to Crump’s office and the National Action Network for additional information regarding Wednesday’s announcement and the reward.

In a striking accusation, a Black politician has charged Mayor Mamdani and his socialist supporters with perpetuating “white supremacy,” signaling a fresh battleground in New York City’s ongoing ideological conflict sparked by the radical left.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards stirred the conversation through his social media, declaring that “white supremacy comes in all forms.”

Richards invoked a famous saying from the late Malcolm X regarding the perils of “dangerous white liberals” to underscore his point.

At its core, this controversy revolves around the distribution of political power, who controls it, and the divergent visions on its utilization.

A contentious issue is Richards’ career-long commitment to increasing Black and Latino homeownership as a route to building generational wealth.

That’s totally at odds with the views of Mamdani’s agenda, and especially his top housing aide, Cea Weaver, who has made comments about housing that are ­beyond bizarre.

She once celebrated the government’s “sacred right to seize private property,” called homeownership “racist” and said it is “a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as ‘wealth building’ public policy.”

Dems under attack

In one of his many warnings about the excesses of the Mamdani machine that drove him from City Hall, former Mayor Eric Adams weighed in on the topic.

He correctly noted on X that “Homeownership is how immigrants, Black, Brown, and working-class New Yorkers built stability and generational wealth despite every obstacle. You have to be completely out of your f***ing mind to call that ‘white supremacy.’ ”

The spark for Richards’ latest comments is a growing resentment among the black political establishment that it is losing its hold on power and influence to the DSA, which, a 2021 survey found, is 85% white.

The group used its superior organizational skills, mostly in gentrifying neighborhoods, to turn out their voters and successfully knock off a slew of congressional and Albany Dems in last month’s primaries.

The coup alarmed the entire party, but black and Latino officials especially see themselves as under attack.

(Republicans are such an insignificant factor in the city’s political landscape that nobody blames them!)

State Attorney General Letitia James, although she had supported Mamdani’s election last year, pounced on the primary results to accuse him and the radicals he supported of being ignorant of the racial and social history of the neighborhoods they would be representing.

“Some of the candidates he has supported do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic,” James said on CNN about the ­primary results.

By then, housing ownership was already a racial flash point under Mamdani.

‘Unfair system’

It first arose in February, when he threatened to raise all city property taxes by nearly 10% if ­Albany did not hike income taxes on wealthy New Yorkers and big corporations.

The outcry was especially sharp in Cambria Heights, a suburban-like neighborhood in southeastern Queens near the Long Island border that is home to numerous black and other nonwhite families.

Many own their homes and some also own rental units.

Richards called the proposed tax plan a “nonstarter” and said at the time that he told the mayor as much.

“Under no circumstance should we consider balancing our budget on the backs of working-class New Yorkers, especially seniors on fixed incomes and workers who keep our city running,” he said in an interview.

A black homeowner named James Johnson, who attended a Cambria Heights protest aimed at Mamdani, was quoted in The Post as saying: “You screamed affordability. You ran on it. You said affordability, affordability, affordability . . . And the first thing, not even three months into your administration, into your term. You wanna hit us with a 9.5% property tax increase? Not happening.”

Another resident, Darryl Smith, added, “You keep raising the taxes, you’re gonna run us out of here. Where are we gonna go?”

The sentiment was widely shared in white liberal political circles as well, with Council Speaker Julie Menin rejecting the mayor’s property tax threat.

Signaling that it would be dead on arrival, Menin said, “We cannot be raising property taxes 9.5% on the backs of small property owners, small business owners, black and brown communities throughout our city.”

Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso agreed: “This would only make an unfair system worse and hit black and brown communities hardest.”

Gov. Hochul, fearing she would be blamed for any tax hikes in an election year, satisfied Mamdani’s need for quick cash by shipping him billions in state money.

Power play

A key aspect of the racial heat is timing.

The surge of mostly white socialists comes as black politicians have reached the height of their political power in the city and state.

Adams, the city’s second black mayor, was forced out after a single term by Mamdani’s followers.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate, Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, respectively, are black.

Hochul’s running mate this year is Adrienne Adams, a former speaker of the City Council and the first black woman to hold the post.

Other top black officials include Attorney General James and the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams.

An additional front in the rising racial antagonism is that DSA members have been sharply critical of Hakeem Jeffries, the Brooklyn pol who, as House minority leader, is the first nonwhite official to hold the top leadership spot of either party in either chamber.

As if to rub salt in black wounds, many socialist newcomers are calling for him to step down, and threatening to remove him if he won’t go voluntarily.

It’s a Tehran Death Trap

A troubling report in The Washington Post paints a bleak picture of President Trump’s options in Iran.

It finds, “Analysts at American spy agencies have concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war.”

The newspaper says the report was written primarily by the CIA, whose analysts “underscored the Tehran regime’s staying power despite the loss of many of its top leaders and much of its military hardware to U.S. and Israeli attacks.”

The finding reflects what has surprised me most about the war. The regime’s willingness to accept so much pain and destruction defies logic — and Western assumptions.

The only explanation that makes a whit of sense is widespread in Israel: that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is a Shia Islamist cult of martyrdom.

Controlled by psychopaths, it tortures and kills resisters and aims to impose its fanatical will on the region, and then the world, no matter the cost.

Only death will stop them.

Two of the five individuals who tragically lost their lives while attempting to assist a distressed swimmer in an Ohio river have been identified as a married couple originally from Honduras.

According to the Associated Press, the couple, Jose Mario Pineda Dias, 33, and Marina Suyada Regalado, 28, drowned in the Scioto River located in Powell on Sunday. The incident occurred after a member of their party encountered difficulties while swimming.

The tragic event has left two young children, ages six and seven, without their parents, as the couple are believed to be their mother and father who were present at the time of the incident.

Authorities previously mentioned that the group had been engaged in fishing close by when they noticed the swimmer struggling in the river.

In a brave but tragic attempt to save the swimmer, they too entered the water but unfortunately found themselves in perilous circumstances.

‘That’s when the tragedy started to occur. I understand that one person got in the river, was struggling in the water. Two people went in to try to save them,’ Delaware County Sheriff Jeffrey Balzer. 

‘Those people started struggling in the river. Now we have two additional people go in the water.’

As the horrific ordeal unfolded, a ‘clearly distraught’ young boy wrapped only in a towel ran along State Route 257 and told a driver that his ‘family was in the river,’ according to Balzer.

The motorist quickly called 911. Several other calls were made to emergency services around 9.25pm on the night of the tragedy. 

The sheriff said that two women were later pulled from the water and tragically pronounced dead at a hospital. The bodies of three men were found on Monday. 

‘It’s not unusual for one person to be struggling in the water,’ said Sheriff Balzer.

‘Other people attempt to save them, yet they don’t have the skills to do that, so we end up with multiple deaths.’ 

Flabia Zamora, the director of consular affairs at the Honduran Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday they were working with US authorities to bring their bodies home.

She said that once US officials identify all of the victims, Honduras will start the repatriation process – which could take a month.

The couple’s children remain in the care of the state of Ohio, but Zamora said efforts will be made to reunite them with relatives in Honduras. 

Water conditions of the river on Sunday were high and fast, according to data from a US Geological Survey water gauge at the nearby dam.

The river was flowing at a rate of about 350 cubic feet per second, which is more than double the average rate.

Balzer warned swimmers to take safety precautions, especially during the summer months.

‘Anytime you’re near water, you need to be confident in your swimming ability or have safety devices available. There’s no shame in wearing a life jacket. It saves lives every day,’ he said.

The tragedy comes shortly after a 23-year-old woman lost her mother, stepdad, and three brothers in treacherous flash floods during a family hike in Utah. 

Spencer and Katrina Long, both 44, and their three sons, Thayne, 13, Gage, 12, and Reid, were swept away after ‘heavy rain’ came down on Friday near the Sunglow campground while they went hiking and canyoneering, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office said.

Deputies were first called to the campground that night after the body of a young man was found in the flood wash.

Spencer, a decorated Provo Fire Captain, and two of his sons, were located that night. His wife and their other son were discovered the following morning.