The death of Adan Manzano, the 27-year-old sports reporter who died while covering the Super Bowl in New Orleans, comes nearly a year after his wife’s fatal car accident.
On Feb. 5, Manzano was in Louisiana reporting on Super Bowl LIX when he died. Police have since arrested a woman, Danette Colbert, on property crime charges, although officials say the investigation in ongoing.
Colbert was seen on surveillance footage with Manzano before his death and was later accused of fraudulently using his credit card.
Manzano’s death follows another loss for his family. His wife, Ashleigh Boyd, died in a car crash on April 11, 2024, in Topeka, Kansas, when she was 24, according to The Topeka Capital-Journal. The husband and wife shared a daughter, who survived the car crash.
The successive deaths of Manzano and his wife have left the Kansas City community grappling with the loss of the two parents in less than a year.
Read on for more about what we know.
What happened to Adan Manzano’s wife, Ashleigh Boyd?
Boyd was a second grade teacher at Lowman Hill Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. Her obituary described her as “a ray of sunshine” whose “sparkling personality was contagious.”
She was driving a Nissan Versa with her daughter as a passenger when the car “collided head-on” with a Ford F-150 pickup, per the Topeka Capitol Journal. Boyd was pronounced dead at the scene, while her daughter and the other driver involved were taken to a hospital to be treated for injuries and later survived.
