Missing Summer Wells' father arrested on domestic assault charge in Tennessee
Donald Wells, the 61-year-old father of missing Summer Wells, has been arrested again — this time on a domestic assault charge, according to court records in Tennessee.
Hawkins County Jail records show he was booked into custody at 4:15 a.m. Tuesday and was scheduled for arraignment at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
Additional details were not immediately available. Neither a spokesperson for the Wells family or the sheriff's office immediately responded to requests for comment.
Don Wells pictured in a Hawkins County booking photo. (Hawkins County Sheriff's Office)
The elder Wells has been arrested before on domestic assault, DUI and firearms charges unrelated to his daughter's disappearance, which remains unsolved. He was also served with a civil order of protection on behalf of his wife back in 2020.
Summer Wells was 5 when she vanished from her family's home in rural Rogersville, Fox News Digital has reported previously. She would now be 10, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has released an age-progressed image showing what she may have looked like as a 9-year-old.
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Summer's mother, Candus Bly, told police she last saw her daughter at their home on Ben Hill Road in Rogersville on June 15, 2021 — when she said the child came inside from planting flowers with her grandmother.
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Summer Moon-Utah Wells in an age-progressed image of what she may have looked like as a 9-year-old. She has been missing since June 15, 2021, when she was 5. (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)
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The parents have maintained that they believe someone entered their 11-acre property, lured the girl outside and took her.
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No suspects have been publicly identified but investigators had been looking for a potential witness — the driver of a red pickup truck that had full-sized ladder racks and white buckets in the bed.
When she was last seen, Summer was about 3 feet tall and around 40 pounds. At the time she went missing, she was wearing gray pants, a pink shirt, and may have been barefoot. She has blonde hair.
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Summer Wells pictured in an undated family photo released by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation shortly after her June 2021 disappearance. Her whereabouts remain unknown. (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation)
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The couple's other children were taken from their home after Summer vanished. According to the family's website, the parents were cleared by a Department of Child Services investigation but have not regained custody of their sons.
Summer’s parents both have criminal records, and Bly’s sister, Rose Marie Bly, was reported missing from Wisconsin in 2009 in a case that remains unsolved.
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Anyone with information on Summer's whereabouts is asked to all the Hawkins County Sheriff's Office at 423-272-7121 or the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-TBI-FIND. Tips can be emailed to TipsToTBI@tn.gov.
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