Louisiana police arrest third suspect in Super Bowl reporter Adan Manzano's hotel death
Manzano, a 27-year-old Kansas City, Missouri-based Telemundo sports reporter, was in New Orleans on assignment to cover Super Bowl LIX. He was found dead with Xanax in his system in his room at the Comfort Suites hotel in Kenner, Louisiana, on the morning of Feb. 5.
Officials said his death was caused by the combined toxic effects of Xanax and alcohol, noting that he had been found "face-down in a pillow with no lividity around his nose and mouth." Since then, Kenner police have arrested so-called "Bourbon Street Hustler" Danette Colbert, 48, and her accused accomplice, Ricky White, in connection with Manzano's death,
On Friday, Kenner police also announced the arrest of Christian Anderson, 33, a New Orleans resident, for his alleged involvement in the plot that led to Manzano's death.
Colbert was nicknamed the "Bourbon Street Hustler" on social media due to her lengthy past targeting men in the French Quarter and stealing their money. She is accused of similar crimes in Las Vegas. Authorities believe she, White and Anderson conspired to drug Manzano and then steal his credit cards before authorities found him dead.
Colbert and Manzano "met in the French Quarter, probably in the wee hours of the morning," Kenner Police Chief Keith Conley previously told Fox News Digital.
"They came back to the hotel that was in the city of Kenner about 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 5, at which time we do have surveillance video from the lobby of the hotel showing them going into [Manzano's] room around that time," Conley said. "Then [Colbert] came out, ran to the store, came back about 30 minutes later, and within 10 or 15 minutes, she left the room. And he was never seen again on any video other than when he went into the room. So, she was the last one to be with him."
Detectives found that one of Manzano's credit cards was missing while processing his hotel room, Conley told reporters during a news conference on Feb. 8. Authorities then obtained a search warrant allowing them to track the locations where the credit card was used after Manzano was found, which led them to Colbert.
White is facing various charges, including simple robbery and multiple counts of fraud. He was later charged with murder in connection with Manzano's death.
Authorities have also obtained an arrest warrant for Anderson for principal to simple robbery, purse snatching, access device fraud, illegal transmission of monetary funds, bank fraud and computer fraud. He is currently detained at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center alongside Colbert and White, Kenner police said.
"Evidence gathered through search warrants, text message records, and digital communications revealed that Anderson, along with previously arrested suspects Danette Colbert and Rickey White, played an active role in a coordinated pattern of targeting victims, drugging them, and stealing personal property, including phones and financial account access," Kenner police said in a Friday press release.
"Detectives discovered that the vehicle used by Danette Colbert on the day of Manzano's death had been rented by Christian Anderson, and further evidence showed that Anderson provided logistical support, engaged in post-crime communication, and assisted in attempts to financially benefit from the victim's stolen assets."
Records also allegedly show that "Anderson and Colbert communicated extensively following the incident, and that he played a role in the group's recurring criminal behavior," Kenner police said.
Colbert was recently sentenced to serve 25 years in prison for crimes unrelated to Manzano's death, including theft, computer fraud and illegal transmission of monetary funds stemming from a 2024 case.
Police are asking anyone with information about Colbert to come forward. Some victims, Conley said, do not speak up, due to the sensitive nature of the suspect's alleged crimes.
Authorities executed a search warrant at Colbert's address after identifying her as a potential suspect in connection with Manzano's death and said they had located a stolen gun that did not appear to be related to Manzano's death and narcotics.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Welcome to the nation's ‘super deportation center,' inspired by Amazon and FedEx but ‘with human beings'
After he was arrested outside his Virginia apartment in March, Georgetown University professor Badar Khan Suri was briefly detained in the state before being put on a plane bound for an immigration detention center more than 1,000 miles away. Suri — who was targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his Palestinian activism and his family ties to Gaza — arrived at the only ICE facility that doubles as an airport, without his attorneys having any idea where he was. Officers told Suri that he had entered the nation's 'super deportation center,' according to his attorneys. The college professor was shackled at the ankles and handcuffed then marched into a 70,000 square foot 'staging facility' in Alexandria, Louisiana, which has emerged as the nexus point for President Donald Trump's mass deportation machine. Suri is far from alone. Since Trump returned to the White House, more than 20,000 people en route to other detention centers have passed through the Louisiana facility — which ICE officials have long aspired to operate like corporate giants FedEx and Amazon. ICE's acting director Todd Lyons has bluntly compared the movement of people to packages. 'We need to get better at treating this like a business, where this mass deportation operation is something like you would see and say, like, Amazon trying to get your Prime delivery within 24 hours,' Lyons told a law enforcement conference in Phoenix earlier this year. 'So, trying to figure out how to do that with human beings,' he said. The idea of 'running the government like a business' has taken root inside ICE over the last decade with lucrative public-private partnerships between the federal government and for-profit contractors, which operate roughly 90 percent of all ICE detention centers. Since before the Trump administration, the ICE field office in New Orleans — which is responsible for removal operations in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee — was modeling operations after shipping giant FedEx and its 'spoke-hub' model. Detainees are temporarily held in detention 'hubs' before they're sent to a network of detention center 'spokes' where they wait to be deported. In Suri's case, he arrived at the Alexandria 'hub' before he was moved to a regional 'spoke' in Texas. The idea for a staging facility in Louisiana 'started on a cocktail napkin' at Ruth's Chris steakhouse, according to Philip Miller, a former ICE official in New Orleans who went on to work for an IT firm that contracts with federal law enforcement. Miller sought 'a more effective and efficient way of moving the growing number of foreign detainees,' according to 2015 newsletter from GEO Group, the private prison contractor that operates the Alexandria facility. Trump's border czar Tom Homan tapped former GEO Group executive David Venturella to support the administration's deportation agenda, and he is now serving in a top role at ICE managing contracts for immigrant detention centers, according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Daniel Bible, who worked at ICE for 15 years, including a year as the executive associate director of removal operations, left the agency in November 2024 to join GEO Group as its executive vice president. GEO Group referred The Independent to ICE for comment. Lyons, who has helmed ICE since March, addressed his now-viral remarks about treating immigrants like packages in an interview the following month. 'The key part that got left out of that statement was, I said, they deal with boxes, we deal with human beings, which is totally different,' he told Boston 25 News. ICE 'should be run like a corporation', he told the outlet. 'We need to be better about removing those individuals who have been lawfully ordered out of the country in a safe, efficient manner,' Lyons continued. 'We can't trade innovation and efficiency for how we treat the people in our custody.' The Independent has requested comment from ICE on its removal operations at the Alexandria facility. Fourteen of the 20 largest ICE detention centers in the U.S. are in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, a network that immigrant advocates have labelled 'deportation alley.' The jails — most of which are operated by private prison companies — hold thousands of people each year. More than 7,000 people are currently jailed in Louisiana's immigration detention centers while Texas facilities are holding more than 12,000. More than 56,000 people are in ICE detention across the country. But Louisiana is home to the nation's only ICE detention center with a tarmac. The facility in Alexandria has become the nation's busiest deportation airport with 1,200 flights to other U.S. detention centers and more than 200 planes leaving the country since Trump took office. ICE has operated at least 209 deportation flights in June, the highest level since 2020. During the first six months of Trump's second presidency, ICE removed nearly 150,000 people from the U.S. Alexandria, a city of roughly 44,000 people, is the ninth largest in the state but surrounded by forest and swampland, with summer temperatures regularly climbing into triple digits with humidity levels exceeding 70 percent. Detainees at the facility in Alexandria cannot be held for more than 72 hours, and the facility does not permit access to visitors or even legal counsel, according to attorneys. Suri was held there for three days before being transferred to a Texas detention center where he was housed in the 'TV room,' according to his attorneys. He was given only a thin plastic mattress. Suri was released after spending eight weeks in detention amid an ongoing legal battle. Louisiana locks up more people per capita than any other U.S. state, in a country with one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet. Most incarcerated people in Louisiana are in local jails, and the state pays sheriffs a daily rate per inmate, creating what civil rights groups fear is a cruel pay-to-play system that incentivizes locking people up. In 2017, the state's Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards advanced legislation to reduce the state's prison population, which ultimately fell by more than 8,000 over the next five years. But at the same time, the first Trump administration was ramping up immigration arrests and expanding capacity to hold immigrants in detention. Following Trump's 2016 victory, ICE expanded the nation's immigration detention system by more than 50 percent, with contracts for private companies to operate at least 40 new detention facilities. Companies including GEO Group, CoreCivic and LaSalle Corrections own or operate facilities that jail the majority of immigrants. All but one of Louisiana's nine facilities are run by private prison firms. The 400-bed detention center in Alexandria is run by GEO Group, whose stock is valued at roughly $4 billion. Inside, dorm-style units hold up to 80 people each, and each includes an expansive 'processing area' with rows of benches and walls lined with hundreds of shackles. People who are processed at the facility from arriving flights are placed in five-point restraints and forced to sit on the benches, according to immigration attorneys. Before it opened in 2014, ICE transported people by bus from different jails to a local commercial airport or Alexandria International Airport, a converted military base that has emerged as what human rights groups called a 'national nerve center' for ICE Air, the group of charter airlines contracted with the agency to operate deportation flights. 'Alexandria allows the concentrated detention and staging of hundreds of people at a time, optimizing efficiency of ICE's deportation machine,' according to a 2024 report from a coalition of human rights groups. In August 2017, the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties found that the Alexandria facility 'is not properly screening for and identifying detainees at risk for suicide' and 'does not provide mental health treatment and programming,' the report found. That civil rights office was among bureaus within Homeland Security that have been abruptly shuttered under Trump's second administration. Alexandria is a two-hour drive from Baton Rouge and more than three hours away from New Orleans, where most of the state's immigration attorneys live and practice. That distance has made access to legal counsel for the nearly 8,000 people in Louisiana's detention facilities enormously difficult. There is little if any access to the internet or law libraries and few chances to privately speak with family or attorneys. To visit detainees at another facility, the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center, roughly 200 miles from New Orleans, Tulane University law professor Mary Yanik and students with the Immigrants' Rights Law Clinic said they leave by 5:30 a.m. and return as late as 10 p.m., in order to speak with as many people as possible. 'That is a grueling schedule, if you think about the number of hours for a single visit with a client for a single court hearing,' she told The Independent earlier this year. 'They feel forgotten. They feel like they're screaming into a void.' The most common question among them is 'why am I here?' 'They're so disoriented by what was happening to them, and so confused. At least one person thought they were in Texas,' she said. ''What is going on? Can't I just go home?'' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Chad's opposition leader sentenced to 20 years in prison for inciting violence
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Chad's criminal court on Saturday sentenced Success Masra, the country's former prime minister and opposition leader, to 20 years in prison after convictions on charges including incitement to hatred and revolt and complicity to murder. The charges stemmed from a deadly clash between herders and farmers in May. Masra was also fined 1 billion CFA francs, or almost $1.8 million. Before leaving the courtroom, Masra gave a message to his supporters: 'Stand firm.' Following the verdict Kadjilembay Francis, Masra's lawyer, told reporters: 'He has just been subjected to ignominy and unworthy humiliation.' He said he will appeal the sentence. Masra and 67 co-defendants, mostly people from the same Ngambaye ethnic group, have been on trial accused of causing a clash between herders and farmers in May in Logone Occidental in the southwest of the central African country. The fighting left 35 people dead and six others injured. He has denied the charges against him. Masra, who was prime minister between January and May last year, is the head of the Les Transformateurs party and has been a sharp critic of Mahamat Déby, Chad's current president. Déby took power in 2021 after his father Idriss Déby Itno was killed while fighting rebels in the country's north. He had ruled the country for 30 years. Déby legitimized his presidency with an election earlier this year, which was opposed by Masra and his party.
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Chad's opposition leader sentenced to 20 years in prison for inciting violence
DAKAR, Senegal — Chad's criminal court on Saturday sentenced Success Masra, the country's former prime minister and opposition leader, to 20 years in prison after convictions on charges including incitement to hatred and revolt and complicity to murder. The charges stemmed from a deadly clash between herders and farmers in May. Masra was also fined 1 billion CFA francs, or almost $1.8 million. Before leaving the courtroom, Masra gave a message to his supporters: 'Stand firm.' Following the verdict Kadjilembay Francis, Masra's lawyer, told reporters: 'He has just been subjected to ignominy and unworthy humiliation.' He said he will appeal the sentence. Masra and 67 co-defendants, mostly people from the same Ngambaye ethnic group, have been on trial accused of causing a clash between herders and farmers in May in Logone Occidental in the southwest of the central African country. The fighting left 35 people dead and six others injured. He has denied the charges against him. Masra, who was prime minister between January and May last year, is the head of the Les Transformateurs party and has been a sharp critic of Mahamat Déby, Chad's current president. Déby took power in 2021 after his father Idriss Déby Itno was killed while fighting rebels in the country's north. He had ruled the country for 30 years. Déby legitimized his presidency with an election earlier this year, which was opposed by Masra and his party.
