Summer Wells' Father Arrested on Assault Charge

Donald Wells, the 61-year-old father of missing Tennessee girl Summer Wells, was booked into Hawkins County Jail at 4:15 a.m. Tuesday on a domestic assault charge, court records say. He’s scheduled for arraignment at 9 a.m. Wednesday. The arrest comes five years after his daughter vanished from the family’s rural home. Her case remains unsolved.

Details about the latest charge weren’t immediately available. Neither a spokesperson for the Wells family nor the sheriff’s office immediately responded to requests for comment.

A History of Domestic Violence Allegations

This isn’t Wells’s first run-in with the law. He has previously faced arrests on domestic assault, DUI and firearms charges, all unrelated to his daughter’s disappearance. In 2020, officials served him with a civil order of protection on behalf of his wife. The order came a year before Summer disappeared.

Both of Summer’s parents have criminal records. Her mother, Candus Bly, told police she last saw Summer at the family’s home on Ben Hill Road in Rogersville on June 15, 2021, after the girl came inside from planting flowers with her grandmother. Summer was 5. She’d now be 10, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed image showing what she might have looked like at 9.

An Unsolved Case and a Fractured Family

The parents say they believe someone entered their 11-acre property, lured Summer outside and took her. No suspects have been publicly identified. Investigators sought a potential witness who drove a red pickup truck with full-sized ladder racks and white buckets in the bed. When last seen, Summer was about 3 feet tall and around 40 pounds. She wore gray pants and a pink shirt, may have been barefoot, and had blonde hair.

The couple’s other children left their home after Summer vanished. The family’s website says the parents were cleared by a Department of Child Services investigation but haven’t regained custody of their sons. Another thread remains unresolved: Bly’s sister, Rose Marie Bly, was reported missing from Wisconsin in 2009, and her case remains unsolved.

How to Help

Anyone with information about Summer’s whereabouts is asked to call 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 [email protected].

Why This Matters: Five years on, Summer Wells is still missing. The public record around her family includes documented domestic violence allegations, including a civil protective order served in 2020. The arrest highlights how protective orders and prior domestic assault charges fit into the broader picture child welfare agencies weigh when deciding whether children are safe at home. The couple’s sons remain out of their custody, even after the family says a Department of Child Services investigation cleared the parents. That’s a reminder of how much these cases place on public institutions to protect children. For a community still seeking answers, sustained investigative resources and clear tip lines matter long after the headlines fade.