READING, Pa. – An arena football player on Reading’s new team, The Pennsylvania Benjamins, is behind bars following a shooting in Ohio.<\/p>\n
“I broke the news to them,\u201d said Gregg Fornario, general manager with the team. \u201cVery shocking. No one knew when they came and got him.”<\/p>\n
And their head coach, who led them to a 3-1 start, is now out.<\/p>\n
“The league went a different way with the head coach. Coach Lee Johnson is no longer with us,\u201d Fornario said.<\/p>\n
According to the U.S. Marshals Service, former Benjamins player Brandon Nichols is in the Berks County Jail on $1,000,000 bail after his arrest at the Best Western hotel in Cumru Township.<\/p>\n
“Just a couple weeks ago, he’s involved in an incident where he’s pistol whipping somebody and shooting them with a rifle, and he’s back up here like nothing happened,\u201d said U.S. Marshal Robert Clark.<\/p>\n
Marshals say Nichols allegedly broke into a man’s home with a handgun and rifle and then shot him with a shotgun.<\/p>\n
Nichols served as one of the faces of the new team, doing community outreach work and finding success on the field, speaking to 69 News following a home opening win and giving a football to his son.<\/p>\n
“It’s been four years. I been through trials and tribulations and this is the first time my kids got to see me play,\u201d Nicholas said.<\/p>\n
“This is one of those cases where a single lapse of judgment could cost this young man everything,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis happened on March 27th and camp started on March 30th,\u201d Fornario recalled.<\/p>\n
The team says they’re letting the justice system play out and looking to move forward with the rest of the season without Nichols and with a new coach.<\/p>\n
“We’re promoting Bernie, who was with the Reading Express for years. He was our DB coach,\u201d Fornario said. \u201cHe’s now gonna be our head coach.”<\/p>\n
Bernie Nowotarski will now assume the role of head coach for the Pennsylvania Benjamins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – An arena football player on Reading’s new team, The Pennsylvania Benjamins, is behind bars following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[86247,8335,86246,86248,35135,6512,86245,86249,28,128,130,129,58380,13132],"class_list":["post-193730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-arena-football-player","tag-berks-county-jail","tag-bernie-nowotarski","tag-brandon-nichols","tag-coach","tag-cumru-township","tag-gregg-fornario","tag-head-coach-for-the-pennsylvania-benjamins","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-robert-clark","tag-u-s-marshals-service"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}