NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana jury convicted a woman of negligent homicide on Thursday in the death of a Telemundo television reporter who had been visiting New Orleans to cover the Super Bowl, according to the Jefferson Parish district attorney's office.
Danette Colbert, 49, was also convicted of racketeering, as was her accomplice, 35-year-old Rickey White, according to Paul Purpura, a spokesperson for the district attorney's office. Racketeering carries up to a 50-year sentence in Louisiana.
The two had spent years carrying out a criminal enterprise that drew in victims in the city’s historic French Quarter with the promise of sex, then used drugs to knock them out and drain their bank accounts using stolen cards and phones, according to prosecutors.
Colbert was the last person seen leaving the room of Adan Manzano, a 27-year-old reporter and anchor for Telemundo based in Kansas City, Missouri, who was found dead in his hotel room Feb. 5 in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner days before the Super Bowl last year.
An autopsy revealed that Manzano died lying face down on a pillow, unable to breathe after ingesting a combination of alcohol and the depressant Xanax.
Prosecutors had sought to convict both Colbert and White on the charge of manslaughter, which carries up to a 40-year sentence. White was found not guilty.
Colbert's negligent homicide conviction carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, Jefferson Parish Assistant District Attorney Jenny Voss told reporters. She said the jury had carefully weighed all the evidence and she respected its decision.
“We are pleased with the verdict — we knew this was a difficult case going in," she told reporters. “Justice was served."
Manzano’s family was unable to attend the trial, Voss added. Steve Downing, the general manager of Telemundo Kansas City where Manzano had worked, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stavros Panagoulopoulos, Colbert's attorney, and Leo Caillier III, White's attorney, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Colbert, whose arrest record included allegations of drugging men and theft, later used Manzano's credit card at a New Orleans gas station and other stores in the area.
In court documents, prosecutors described Colbert as acting under the guise of a “prostitute or ‘party girl’” while White served as her “pimp,” who provided security and helped find and rob victims.
Another man who assisted Colbert and White with their criminal ring, Christian Anderson, 35, testified against them in exchange for reducing his charges to simple robbery and access device fraud, according to Purpura. Court records show he pleaded guilty to both charges and received a six-year prison sentence.
Anderson “is relieved to be able to put this behind him,” said his attorney, Bradley Phillips. Anderson has been cooperating with law enforcement since his arrest and "has clearly demonstrated remorse for his past behavior."
In court documents, prosecutors revealed extensive text messages dating back years among Colbert, White and Anderson, discussing using drugs to incapacitate and rob victims.
Colbert and White are scheduled to be sentenced in late September, according to the Jefferson Parish district attorney's office.
Manzano’s death came a year after his wife died in a car accident. The couple left behind a toddler daughter.
Brook reported from New Orleans. Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
FILE - The logo for NFL Super Bowl 59 football game is seen on the field Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during the rule of former President Bashar Assad was sentenced Thursday to 60 years in a U.S. prison after a federal judge recounted the “unimaginably cruel" details of his abuse.
A jury in March found Samir Ousman Alsheikh guilty on all six counts including torture and conspiracy to commit torture for his actions while in charge of Syria's infamous Adra Prison from roughly 2005 to 2008.
“The conduct was heinous, unimaginably cruel, and almost unspeakably violent and brutal,” U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera said before announcing the sentence.
Alsheikh, dressed in a khaki prison uniform and shackled at the ankles, was expressionless after he learned his fate. He waved to members of his family in the gallery before officers handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.
Defense attorneys said they will appeal the sentence.
Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families.
Prosecutors said Alsheikh, seeking to quash political dissent, sent certain prisoners to a notorious wing of Adra where they were held in small isolation cells and brutalized. During the trial, three victims recounted beatings while suspended from pipes on the ceiling and the use of a device that folded their bodies in half at the waist. One person testified that Alsheikh stomped on the device with his foot.
Alsheikh came to the U.S. in 2020 and applied for citizenship, but prosecutors say he concealed his involvement in torture. Federal authorities detained him at Los Angeles International Airport in July 2024.
In a three-hour hearing, the judge heard statements of support from Alsheikh’s son and daughter. Rami Alsheikh, his son, said the family cannot reconcile his kindness and compassion with the accusations he faced at trial.
“They did, and still do not, make sense to us, given the man we know and love,” he said.
Before the sentencing, Alsheikh himself addressed the court in a rambling statement in which he said he tried to fight corruption and clean up Adra Prison. Alsheikh said he was not an Assad loyalist and that he “only served as an employee.”
Alsheikh is the highest-ranking former member of the Assad government to be tried and convicted in person outside of Syria, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
“Criminals who inflict the type of savage brutality that this defendant did on his victims must never be granted refuge in our country,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Thursday. “We hope today’s sentence gives some semblance of healing and closure to this defendant’s victims.”
In a sentencing memo filed this month, DOJ prosecutors said Alsheikh participated in the torture of his victims because he had the power to do so and because he thought he would never be held accountable.
The memo included statements from several victims, one of whom, Nidal Shikhani, said he can “still hear the screams of others begging for mercy, repeating, ‘Leave me, leave me.’ ”
Prosecutors had asked for a minimum sentence of 80 years. Alsheikh's attorneys, Nina Marino and Collin Cate, called for a five-year sentence, noting that he is 74 years old and has “significant medical and cognitive conditions.” They also said he was willing to be deported to Syria, where a new government has sought to hold Assad-era security officials accountable.
Jurors also convicted Alsheikh in March of lying to U.S. immigration authorities and fraudulently obtaining a green card and attempting to naturalize as a U.S. citizen.
Alsheikh was arrested with help from the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S.-based opposition organization. One of its staff members, a former Syrian detainee, was first tipped off in 2022 by a refugee that Alsheikh was in the United States. The organization alerted several federal agencies and began working with them to build a case against him.
"We are committed to a peaceful and democratic Syria, and that cannot happen without justice and accountability for the remnants of Assad’s regime," Mouaz Moustafa, the task force's executive director, said Thursday.
Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December 2024, bringing a 14-year civil war to an end. But the country has continued to suffer from sporadic outbreaks of violence.
In March 2025, armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces on Syria’s coast. A government counteroffensive then spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs.
On Thursday, three people were sentenced in the Syrian city of Aleppo in connection with the violence. Two members of the pro-Assad groups were sentenced to death and life in prison, while a member of the security forces who took part in the revenge attacks was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Thanawala reported from Atlanta.
The exterior of the federal courthouse is seen March 27, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)
