Ex-Basketball Coach Dies in Prison a Week After Being Sentenced for Sex with Minor

CASTAIC, CA - The custody death of a former youth basketball coach a week after he was sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with a 16-year-old girl was under investigation today.

The coroner's office identified him as 47-year-old Carson resident Herman Charles Nash, who helped lead the boys basketball team at West Hollywood Pacific Hills to a state championship just three years ago.

The death at the Pitchess Detention Center North Facility at 29340 The Old Road was reported to the Sheriff's Homicide Bureau at 4:54 p.m. Wednesday, according to Deputy Ryan Rouzan.

The circumstances of Nash's death are under investigation. A message left for the homicide detective handling the case was not immediately returned.

An autopsy was pending, coroner's Lt. Dave Smith said.

Nash, who worked as a personal trainer in the Los Angeles area and as a basketball coach for the Pacific Elite Basketball Club, was sentenced on April 20 to a year in county jail and 52 weeks of sex offender treatment.

Police said after Nash's arrest last June that the girl had received one-on-one training sessions from him.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Anne H. Egerton also barred Nash from having any contact with the girl or any other minors other than his own children and suspended a four-year, four-month state prison term that Nash would only have had to serve if he violated the conditions of his five-year probation.

Nash was taken into custody immediately after the sentencing hearing to begin serving his jail term stemming from his March 3 no-contest plea to three counts of unlawful sexual intercourse. He had been scheduled for release on October 9, about halfway through the one-year sentence, according to sheriff's online inmate records.

Defense attorney Robert Schwartz called his client a "beloved figure in the community" and a "remarkable man who made a terrible mistake."

According to a 2013 Los Angeles Times article, Nash was a running back at Manual Arts High School who graduated in 1987 and went on to play at Long Beach State. He went on to become an assistant coach of the boys basketball team at West Hollywood Pacific Hills, leading the squad to the 2013 state championship game after the head coach left during mid-season to coach the El Salvador national team.

Pacific Hills won the title game, but by then the head coach had returned.

Namon Wright, one of the star point guards who was a junior on the title- winning team before moving on to the University of Missouri, expressed grief and disbelief in several tweets.

One read: "Man my coach meant everything to me! I can't stop crying ... ."

Another player on that championship team, Brandon Taylor, now a guard at the University of Utah, tweeted, "Will be forever hurt from this one."

Nash had five children, according to The Times.

--City News Service, photo courtesy of Pacific Hills.