MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER JAILED FOR RAPING 15-YEAR-OLD IS KILLED IN PRISON BY CONVICTED MURDERER

A middle school gym teacher who was jailed for repeatedly raping a 15-year-old girl has been killed in prison.  Ernest Nichols, 60, was found unresponsive inside his cell at Greene Correctional Institution in Maury on Sunday morning at around 6.50am, according to officials.
The facility in North Carolina was sent into lockdown, and he was pronounced dead about 30 minutes later.
Nichols was convicted of statutory rape in 2011 and was sentenced to 15 years behind bars. He was set to be released in September 2027. 
On Tuesday, the Greene County Sheriff's Office issued a murder warrant for Wilbert Baldwin, 41, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 2010. 
The disgraced former gym teacher at Ransom Middle School was first charged with statutory rape and a slew of other sex offenses in 2009, WBTV reported. 
According to a search warrant, Nichols raped the teenager multiple times over the course of six months starting in the fall of 2008. 
The former teacher was also said to have watched his young victim have consensual sex with another male during the same time period. 
Investigators also found that Nichols had been posing as his teenage son on Facebook and had sent the teen girl inappropriate messages. 
These texts included him telling her to let him know when she was going to take a shower and prompting her to make up sexual stories. 
Investigators said he also told her to tell people she 'wanted to' have sex with him if anyone ever asked about their relationship.  
All the instances of sexual assault occurred at Nichols's Huntersville home, where he was arrested in 2009. 
Investigators seized videotapes, a camera, pictures and sex toys on the premises. 
The victim was not a student at the school where he taught. 
Before his arrest, police said the victim's mother confronted him. During the tense interaction, Nichols, who was married with two kids, allegedly called himself a 'pig.'  
During his hearing, he was uncooperative with the judge when he was urged to enter a plea deal, reportedly insisting in court that he was not a 'straw man,' as per WBTV. 
He also claimed he did not understand the charges pressed against him and had to be physically restrained by the bailiff as he reluctantly entered his pleas. 
Nichols's death remains under investigation. The Bureau of Investigations said that after Baldwin was served with the murder warrant, he was taken to the Department of Adult Correction (NCDAC) to continue his current sentence.