State, prosecution rest case against volleyball coach accused of sex assualt

Closing arguments will begin on Friday in the trial of a former volleyball coach who is accused of assaulting two teen girls.

Damien Merrick is charged with sexual assault of a child and providing drugs to the teenage girls during a team trip to Colorado. The state and the defense rested their case Thursday afternoon.

The former volleyball coach faced another round of testimony that two teenage girls and gave marijuana to them and other young players on his team.

“A 48-year-old man shouldn't be drinking and smoking and partying with 16-year olds like he's some kind of frat star, should he?” the prosecutor said.

Merrick’s daughter took the stand in his defense. She told the jury her dad never provided her with drugs or alcohol. But prosecutors poked holes in her story, referencing a volleyball trip to Colorado.

“He was around you when you were in the hot tub in Colorado, right?” the prosecutor asked the daughter.

“Yes Ma’am,” she replied.

“And he was passing Smirnoff Ices between y'all, wasn't he?” the prosecutor asked.

“No Ma'am,” she replied.

“You just said it was sitting by his feet,” the prosecutor said.

“No, it was sitting on a table is what I said,” the daughter said.

“Ok, so it's just sitting there and no one's drinking it?” the prosecutor said.

“No, he was drinking it,” the daughter said.

“Oh, so now he's drinking it?” the prosecutor asked.

A Grapevine police detective testified Merrick had a sexual relationship with one of those girls for three months and that he raped a second girl in the bathroom at her friend’s house.

A nurse at Cook Children’s Medical Center who did a sexual assault exam on the first victim said she asked the 16-year-old if Merrick had ever threatened her. She told the nurse what she told the jury earlier in the trial.

"And she said but he's tried to get me to kill ourselves he told me to lay down and he was going to run over me with my own car he told me he would punch me in the face first so I wouldn't feel it after he ran me over he was going to shoot himself,” nurse Stacey Henley said.

The detective testified that Merrick sexually assaulted the first victim twice -- once in the car in the parking lot of a shopping area and another time in a hotel.

Closing arguments begin Friday at 8 a.m. The case is expected to go to the jury on Friday as well.