Text messages show yearslong scheme between suspects in Super Bowl reporter’s death: Sources
Kenner Police Department | Broward County Sheriff’s Office
(KENNER, La.) — Text messages between two people charged in connection with the death of a Telemundo Kansas City reporter in Louisiana to cover the Super Bowl show they had been scheming for years to drug and rob victims in multiple locations, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Danette Colbert was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Adan Manzano, who police said was found dead in his hotel room in Kenner, Louisiana, on Feb. 5 with Xanax in his system.
Colbert was found with Manzano’s cellphone and credit card, Kenner police said, adding that she and her alleged accomplice, Rickey White, “commonly use substances to drug their victims.”
Investigators are working to determine whether Colbert and White were operating an organized scheme that targeted men in New Orleans, other locations in Louisiana and Las Vegas, according to the sources.
They have already identified other men who appear to have been victimized, the sources said.
Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC News the Louisiana attorney general is involved in the case.
“This is a national, multijurisdictional crime spree. For that reason, we’ve asked and have been working with our attorney general to run point. Hopefully, we’ll have a better shot at solving it that way,” Williams told ABC News. “This was not random. There’s a certain pattern with having drinks or food and then saying to the person they’ll help him back to their room.”
Surveillance video shows Manzano and Colbert at his hotel the morning he was found dead, face-down on a pillow, police said.
Investigators said they found Xanax during a search of Colbert’s residence one day after the death of Manzano. The coroner determined the reporter died of the combined toxic effects of Xanax and alcohol along with positional asphyxia. The manner of death is undetermined due to the “uncertain circumstances” of the case, the coroner said.
Colbert was initially charged with property crimes, including theft and fraud-related offenses, after police said she had his cellphone and credit card in her home. She was subsequently charged with second-degree murder in his death.
White, who was arrested in Florida last month, is charged with robbery and fraud.
“Kenner Police Department detectives believe Colbert intentionally drugged Manzano to render him unconscious before robbing him, following a pattern seen in her prior offenses,” the Kenner Police Department said last month while announcing the murder charge in the case.
Colbert and White, who has since been extradited to Jefferson Parish, remain in custody on no bond.
(NEW YORK) — Oklahoma is under alert for fire danger on Monday after being devastated by deadly blazes over the weekend, and amid a continued fire threat in the Plains.
More than 50 million Americans are under alert for fire weather conditions on Monday. Red flag warnings and fire weather watches have been issued in more than a dozen states, from Texas and Oklahoma up to the Dakotas as well as Florida, due to the chance for high winds and low humidity.
Parts of Oklahoma, as well as Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, face a critical threat of fire danger, with gusts up to 45 mph possible along with relative humidity down to 9% in places.
The continued fire threat comes after four people were killed and over 140 injured in Oklahoma due to high winds and raging wildfires that ignited on Friday, officials said.
More than 130 fires were reported in 44 counties, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Friday.
More than 400 homes and structures have been destroyed in the fires, the agency said. That includes Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s ranch near Luther; the governor said his farmhouse experienced a “total loss” in Friday’s fires.
“We’ll be rebuilding with all of Oklahoma,” he said in a video posted to social media over the weekend.
Stillwater Fire Chief Terry Essary told ABC News on Monday that 75 structures were lost in his area alone after multiple wildfires broke out on Friday amid high winds that made for challenging conditions.
“The wind was blowing so hard,” Essary said. “It was a very helpless feeling, but you just keep at it. You do what you can, you save what you can, and you keep moving on to the next and helping as many people as possible.”
A state of emergency remained in effect on Sunday for 12 Oklahoma counties due to the wildfires and fire weather conditions, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said.
The fire threat continues in Oklahoma and increases in West Texas on Tuesday, with an extreme critical risk for weather conditions. Winds could gust 60 to 75 mph with relative humidity down to 7% in places. Any fires that develop in these conditions can spread easily and will be very difficult to control.
ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal and James Scholz contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In February 2023, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted to social media a tightly edited video with dramatic music showing thousands of men, with their heads pushed down, being transferred to the country’s newest prison: the Terrorism Confinement Center.
“Early this morning, in a single operation, we transferred the first 2,000 gang members to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT),” Bukele said on X. “This will be their new home, where they will live for decades, unable to do any more harm to the population.”
Two weeks ago, Bukele posted a similar video on X in which hundreds of men in white uniforms, with their heads shaved, are seen running bent over while being moved into the mega prison. But this time, the individuals weren’t criminals who were arrested in El Salvador.
The video showed CECOT receiving over 200 Venezuelan migrants who are alleged to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The migrants were sent to El Salvador by U.S. authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, as part of a $6 million deal the Trump administration arranged in their effort to crack down on illegal immigration.
CECOT, one of Latin America’s largest prisons, was opened as part of a crackdown on criminal gangs in El Salvador, whose incarceration rate is one of the highest in the world. The mega prison, which can hold up to 40,000 detainees, has been criticized by human rights groups over alleged human rights violations.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was scheduled to visit the prison on Wednesday along with the Salvadorian minister of justice.
The move by the Trump administration to deport alleged migrant gang members to a notorious prison in another country, without due process, has sparked an outcry from relatives of some of the detainees and by immigration advocates and attorneys who say that some of those deported were not Tren de Aragua gang members.
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week acknowledged in a sworn declaration that “many” of the noncitizens deported last week under the Alien Enemies Act did not have criminal records in the United States. Administration officials have not been clear about the evidence they have that shows the detainees are gang members.
In a subsequent sworn declaration, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The declaration was included in the Trump administration’s recent motion to vacate Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act.
“While it is true that many of the [Tren de Aragua gang] members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna said.
Ivannoa Sanchez, who told ABC News that her husband, Jose Franco Caraballo Tiapa, is being held at CECOT, said that he has never been in trouble with the law.
“He has never done anything, not even a fine, absolutely nothing,” said Sanchez.
“I can’t rest, I don’t even eat, I haven’t even had juice or water because I know he isn’t eating either,” Sanchez said.
Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, told ABC News that detainees in CECOT, as well as other prisons in El Salvador, are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, and only make court appearances in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time.
“The Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as ‘terrorists,’ and has said that they ‘will never leave,'” Goebertus said, adding that the Human Rights Watch is not aware of any detainees who have ever been released from CECOT.
According to human rights advocates and immigration attorneys, CECOT prisoners only leave their cell for 30 minutes a day and sleep on metal beds in overcrowded cells.
“They only have about half an hour outside of their windowless cells to be outside in a hallway of the prison,” Margaret Cargioli, an attorney for the nonprofit Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told ABC News. “They are overcrowded within each of the cells, and they’re sleeping on metal.”
For years, Amnesty International has published reports on detention centers and prisons in El Salvador, and has alleged systematic abuse of detainees and “patterns of grave human rights violations.” Those findings were acknowledged in a 2023 human rights report published by the U.S. Department of State that said there have been significant human rights issues in Salvadoran prisons.
Ana Piquer, the Americas director at Amnesty International, called the detainment in El Salvador of the Venezuelan migrants a “disregard of the U.S. human rights obligations.”
“Amnesty International has extensively documented the inhumane conditions within detention centers in El Salvador, including the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) where those removed are now being held, ” Piquer said in a statement. “Reports indicate extreme overcrowding, lack of access to adequate medical care, and widespread ill-treatment amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.”
Attorneys representing some of the Venezuelan migrants told ABC News that the lack of communication is a special concern — as opposed to the U.S., where detainees can communicate with their families and attorneys.
“There’s no communication with family or counsel,” Cargioli said of CECOT. “The concern just raises to an entirely other level.”
(DALLAS, TEXAS) — A woman and a teenager drowned during an alleged smuggling attempt after the driver of their vehicle drove into a canal while fleeing authorities following major flooding in Texas, authorities said.
Now, two men face federal charges in connection with their deaths, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
The DOJ said the incident occurred Friday morning in McAllen, which saw record rain bring severe flooding last week.
U.S. Border Patrol agents conducting surveillance spotted a white Ford F-150 that had “previously identified as being involved in alien smuggling,” according to the federal complaint. The agents surveilled the vehicle and saw a “body swap of suspected illegal aliens” with a black Ford Explorer, according to the complaint.
Agents followed the Ford Explorer and approached the vehicle after it stopped at a low spot in a flooded road, according to the complaint.
The driver of the Ford Explorer — identified by the DOJ as Jose Alexis Baeza-Combaluzier, a 26-year-old Mexican national — then fled and drove through the flooded area, according to the complaint.
The agents found the vehicle approximately half a mile away in a nearby canal, according to the complaint. The agents jumped into the canal and were able to rescue Baeza-Combaluzier and four migrants, including an undocumented Guatemalan and her 13-year-old son, according to the complaint.
Two other occupants of the vehicle drowned, the DOJ said. The rescued mother’s 14-year-old son was found in the recovered vehicle, and the body of another woman was recovered from the canal, according to the complaint.
Baeza-Combaluzier and the alleged driver of the white Ford F-150 — Vicente Garcia Jr., 18, of Roma, Texas — have been charged in the smuggling deaths, the Justice Department said.
Baeza-Combaluzier was denied bail during a court appearance on Monday and is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, court records show. ABC News has reached out to his public defender for comment and has not gotten a response.
Garcia is expected to make his initial appearance on Wednesday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
If convicted, they face up to life in prison or the possibility of a death sentence, prosecutors said.
