Nolan Wells' Friend Made THIS Move With the Case Open

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
Every friend who is on that boat with Nolan Wells has an attorney now. The family has Ben Crump, their own investigators, their own autopsy. One friend went on national television. Content creators are naming names to millions of people. Everybody connected to this case is making moves right now. But the question nobody is asking is which of those moves actually helps the truth come out? Which ones are just following a narrative?
All three friends that we've seen in those pictures, they have attorneys. The sheriff says they've been cooperative. Crump says the family doesn't actually know what cooperation looks like.
If you're one of those friends and you genuinely did nothing wrong, is getting an attorney the smartest move right now? Or is it the most suspicious? Or is it both?

**Eric Faddis** (0:56)
You know, I'm an attorney, so I might be a little biased on this. Sure. I think it's potentially both.
I think that, you know, when you have all of this fervor in the community about, hey, we've got to get an answer, something happened to this kid, things are looking a little sketchy, there's inconsistencies. You know, you start to worry about the pressure and targeting of people around Nolan Wells. You know, even if they didn't do anything wrong, is there a pressure from the community on law enforcement to pin this on somebody, to come up with an explanation, even if that explanation might not be 100% correct, and even if that explanation might improperly implicate some alleged wrongdoing on behalf of a friend in which they had no real involvement. And so I think that it does make sense to have an attorney under these circumstances, not only for the law enforcement context, but gosh, you got media probably is contacting these folks. They got to be careful what they say, how they present it.

**Tony Brueski** (1:57)
And it's so heartbreaking because if these kids did absolutely nothing wrong, and in no way are we saying they did at all. From everything we've understood so far, it looks like these were a pretty tight group of friends. And then to suddenly be accused of doing something heinous to your friend, you'd almost have to lawyer up. And it's not necessarily a sign of I'm doing something wrong, but you gotta protect yourself from the world that's now suddenly coming at you.

**Robin Drake** (2:28)
Yeah, from everything we're seeing from the friend side, behaviorally too, that's what I've been looking at. Again, only from what we've been seeing out of this. There's no wobble, there's no leakage of unhealthy behaviors outside of being young and making the choices you're making on July 4th. So we're not seeing wobbles there.
And what I'm also been curious about too is, oh man, it just left my mind. Forget it, go back to Tony, come back to me in a sec.

**Tony Brueski** (2:53)
I want to ask you about this specifically. We don't have toxicology yet. That will come out eventually.
I'm going to take a wild guess. Let's just go down this road. In theory, I'm not saying it is true. I'm going to guess there might be drinking involved at a minimum.
And there might be other things. Who knows? They're young, they're 18
It's the summer before everybody's going off and doing stuff. Some are already in college, some it's their first run out. It's that time. I've been saying it akin to, remember American Pie, the movie, and the parties. That to me kind of is like the atmosphere reminiscent of that, except you're on a barrier island in a paradise type setting. I mean, dumb things happen, crazy things happen, fun things happen, all of the above can happen there. But if there is drinking involved, if there was drugs involved, more specifically to the drinking area of things, where those sort of things could be obtained legally by someone, not an 18-year-old, what kind of accountability might you be looking at if there's liquor or alcohol found in his system, and then tracing back to where that alcohol came from, and who got it, and from where?

**Eric Faddis** (4:06)
Josh, you know, it reminds me a little bit, Tony, certainly not identical, but similar to, and then also like a college frat situation, where someone is a freshman and they're not of age, they're provided alcohol, they overindulge, and they die, and those things happen. And I think at that juncture, we look at what is the source of that intoxicant that appeared to contribute to someone's death? What charges could arise from that? You know, there's, depends on the facts, but contributing to the delinquency of a minor is one that comes to mind.