New Orleans Judge Had Been Warned By Previous Victim Before Releasing Woman Arrested In Connection With Reporter’s Death During The Super Bowl

Infuriating that this woman was still out on the streets.

The Super Bowl just wrapped up in New Orleans, and by all accounts the event was a massive success for the city after safety concerns following the Bourbon Street terrorist attack on New Year’s Day.

But tragically, a Kansas City reporter who was in town to cover the Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles was found dead in his hotel room in the days leading up to the game.

Adan Manzano, a reporter for Telemundo affiliate KBKC, was reportedly found dead in his hotel room in Kenner, Louisiana, not far from New Orleans. He was reported missing by his co-workers at 4 PM on Wednesday after missing a meeting earlier in the day, and when authorities found him in his hotel room, they realized that his cell phone and the credit card that he had used to check into the hotel were missing. Authorities say there were no obvious signs of trauma to his body.

While no cause of death has been released, police later arrested 48-year old Danette Colbert after she was caught using Manzano’s credit cards after his death.

According to police, when they went back to watch the security footage, they spotted Manzano entering his hotel room around 4:30 AM on Wednesday along with Colbert, who is from nearby Slidell, Louisiana. They weren’t sure when Manzano met Colbert, but she left a short time later before returning, and then leaving for the final time around 6 AM.

A search warrant that was executed at Colbert’s home led police to find Manzano’s cell phone and credit cards, as well as drugs and a gun that was believed to have been stolen but was unrelated to the reporter’s death.

And unfortunately, it’s not the first time that Colbert has been arrested for this same behavior, leading one of her victims to warn a New Orleans judge just two months ago that Colbert was a threat and would eventually end up killing somebody.

According to NBC News, David Butler was in New Orleans back in 2021 when he met Colbert at a bar in the French Quarter. He said that she approached him along with another woman and asked him to have a drink with them. After briefly leaving his drink unattended, he said he began to feel disoriented.

Colbert offered to help get him home, and the last thing he remembered was getting into an SUV. The next morning, Butler says he woke up on a mattress on the floor of a home he was in town to renovate, and he was missing his phone and wallet, as well as $80,000 from a cryptocurrency account.

He was able to identify Colbert for police by tracking the crypto, and the woman was charged with a slew of felonies and ultimately convicted on those charges last year. But at her sentencing, Orleans Parish Criminal Court judge Nandi Campbell sentenced Colbert to 10 years in prison – and suspended the entire sentence, meaning the woman would instead only serve probation.

It was a decision that Butler protested, telling NBC that he warned the court back in December that Colbert would not change her behavior and that he had “grave concerns” about her light sentence:

“The minimal fines and lack of meaningful incarceration for crimes that could have led to serious injury or loss of life are, quite frankly, an insult to public safety and the justice system. If someone dies due to her actions in the future, their blood will undeniably be on the hands of those who allowed her to escape real accountability today.”

Unfortunately his worst fears appear to have come true, though at this point Colbert has only been charged with fraud and theft pending the results of Manzano’s toxicology reports. But it raises the serious question as to why she was out on the streets to begin with given her extensive history of crimes that, apparently, have now led to the death of a young reporter.

Absolutely disgusting from the judge in this case.