Middle School Teacher Jailed For Heinous Sexual Offenses Allegedly Killed By Convicted Murderer
A former middle school teacher who had been convicted of statutory rape is believed to have been killed inside his North Carolina prison by another inmate.
Ernest Nichols, 60, a former teacher at Ranson Middle School in Charlotte, was arrested in 2009 and initially faced a long list of charges, including statutory rape of a person 13, 14, or 15; six counts of second-degree kidnapping; and four counts of second-degree forcible sex offense, among other allegations.
In 2011, Nichols received a 15-year prison sentence for statutory rape and was projected for release in September 2027.
However, on Sunday, October 5, Nichols was discovered unresponsive in his cell at Greene Correctional Institution in Maury, North Carolina, at around 6:50am local time.
Emergency responders arrived shortly after, but he was pronounced dead at 7:22am.
The facility went into lockdown following his death, and on October 7 the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation announced that another inmate, 41-year-old Wilbert Baldwin, had been served a murder warrant by Greene County Sheriff’s Deputies in connection with Nichols’ death.
After being served with the warrant, the inmate was held without bond and returned to the Department of Adult Correction to continue serving his current sentence while the State Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate the killing at the request of the Greene County Sheriff.
Before Nichols’ conviction, a search warrant in his case stated that he had allegedly raped a girl, who was not a student at his school, several times at his home in Huntersville during a six-month period that began in the fall of 2008.
The warrant, cited by WBTV, further accused Nichols of posing as his own son on Facebook and asking the girl to ‘text message Nichols whenever she entered the shower’.
Nichols had been a physical education instructor at Ranson Middle School in North Charlotte and had worked for the school district for 14 years.
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