Mississippi authorities reached different procedural outcomes in the deaths of Nolan Wells and Kohen Wiley: a grand jury declined to indict anyone in Wells’s death, while the state attorney general found insufficient evidence to prosecute the officer who shot Wiley. Students and community members at Brown University later held a walkout calling for justice for both, the Brown Daily Herald reported.
Wells, an 18-year-old Black college student, was found dead on Horn Island on July 6 after traveling there by boat with friends for Independence Day, according to NPR. The state medical examiner classified his cause and manner of death as undetermined. An autopsy noted bruising beneath the scalp at the back of his head but did not establish how it occurred; it found no skull fracture, ABC7 San Francisco reported.
Wiley, who was one year old, died after Senatobia police officer Hunter Foster fired into a vehicle during a June 14 incident. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch concluded that Foster’s use of force was justified and that the evidence did not warrant presenting the case to a grand jury, CNN reported. Foster later resigned from the department. The Intercept reported that a forensic pathologist retained by Wiley’s family concluded the fatal bullet most likely entered through the vehicle’s side window.
A local walkout within a longer protest history
The Brown walkout brought together more than 20 students and community members, who gathered at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library and marched to Prospect Terrace. The Brown Daily Herald reported that Beta Omega Chi, the Rhode Island chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Rhode Island School of Design’s Black Artists and Designers organized the event. Organizer Kenneth Kalu said the demonstration aimed to remember Wells and Wiley and continue the pursuit of Black liberation and justice, the paper reported.
The walkout took place against a longer history of racial-justice demonstrations in Rhode Island. In 2020, about 2,000 people gathered at Burnside Park and marched toward the State House; days later, a march organized by teenagers drew an estimated 10,000 people to the State House, according to Mapping Social Movements in Rhode Island.
What Providence’s police oversight body can review
Providence has a civilian oversight body, the Providence External Review Authority (PERA), which reviews allegations of misconduct by sworn Providence police officers, according to the City of Providence. Its authority does not extend to the Mississippi cases discussed here. Under PERA’s intake procedures, the executive director reviews complaints within 30 days or by the next scheduled PERA meeting, whichever is later, and recommends whether to dismiss a complaint, refer it to mediation or the police department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, hold it pending an internal investigation, or send it for a full PERA investigation, according to the Providence External Review Authority.
Wells’s family has called for a federal investigation after the grand jury’s decision, ABC News reported. Wiley’s family attorney has said he will continue seeking answers and accountability despite Foster’s resignation, according to CNN.
