Kansas judge reportedly convicts driver in death of teacher whose husband was killed months prior

A Kansas school teacher’s fatal car wreck on Monday led to a vehicular homicide conviction for the motorist who crashed into her – a verdict delivered just four days after a Louisiana jury found a woman guilty of the drugging death of the educator’s widower while he prepared to cover the 2025 Super Bowl for Telemundo.

Todd W Armstrong’s one-day bench trial in an 11 April 2024 traffic collision that killed Ashleigh Boyd in Topeka, Kansas, resulted in the judge, Andrew Holmes, finding him guilty of vehicular homicide, driving on the wrong side of the road and speeding, according to the victim’s father, Brian Hinck.

Armstrong, who had pleaded not guilty, was scheduled for sentencing in November, Hinck said.

Hinck did not immediately describe a reaction to Armstrong’s guilty verdict. Neither the office of the Topeka district attorney, Mike Kagay, nor Armstrong’s lawyer could immediately be reached for comment late on Monday.

Beforehand, Hinck had publicly discussed how much he loathed the idea of Armstrong’s trial happening so soon after the conclusion of a separate one centering on the unrelated, 5 February 2025 death in suburban New Orleans of his son-in-law, Adan Manzano.

Hinck said he and his wife, Nicole, are raising Boyd and Manzano’s daughter, three-year-old Eleanor, after her parents’ deaths 10 months apart. And he had said it was also bitterly disheartening for him to learn that Armstrong, 55, faced no more than one year in prison even if found guilty of vehicular homicide because Kansas law considers the offense a misdemeanor.

Hinck furthermore said he was incredulous that the woman at whose hands Manzano died, according to the Louisiana jury, was on probation at the time of the crime – and that the cases strained his faith in parts of the US criminal justice system.

“The disappointment in the justice system is at a peak level in our house,” Hinck had said.

Boyd, 24, was in her sedan when Armstrong – in a pickup truck on the wrong side of the road – hit her head-on. The teacher at Topeka’s Lowman Hill elementary school was pronounced dead at the scene, and Eleanor – then an infant passenger – was injured, according to investigators.

Court records cited by the Topeka news station KSNT alleged that investigators recovered evidence showing Armstrong’s truck had been parked for five hours at a casino in Kansas City, about an hour’s drive away, on the morning of the crash. Armstrong allegedly told authorities that either a blown tire or mechanical failure caused him to crash into Boyd, though investigators detected no obvious signs of such defects in his truck, said the court records reported by KSNT.

There also evidently was a urine drug screen result indicating the presence of cocaine metabolites in Armstrong’s system, as the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. However, according to court records, Armstrong’s attorney successfully argued that the drug screen result should be omitted from being considered as evidence during the defendant’s trial.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that Armstrong’s lawyer, Kevin Shepherd, had argued for an acquittal during the trial on Monday by pointing to a 2002 Kansas supreme court ruling which said vehicular homicide required more than “ordinary negligence”.

Meanwhile, Boyd’s husband, Manzano, was working for the Spanish-language Telemundo affiliate in Kansas City when he traveled to cover Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. Manzano was found dead in his hotel room in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, Louisiana, days before one of the teams he covered – the Kansas City Chiefs – played in the big game.

Investigators ultimately determined Manzano had been preyed on by a group who descended on victims in New Orleans’ French Quarter, knocked them unconscious by furtively drugging them, and stole their phones and bank cards to drain their financial accounts.

Manzano’s autopsy revealed the native of Toluca, Mexico, had died lying face down on a pillow, having asphyxiated after ingesting a combination of alcohol and the pharmaceutical depressant Xanax.

On Thursday, after a four-day trial, a jury at a suburban New Orleans state courthouse convicted Danette Colbert, 49, of negligent homicide in Manzano’s death. That jury also convicted both Colbert and her accomplice, Rickey White, 35, of racketeering.

A third defendant in Manzano’s death, 35-year-old Christian Anderson, ultimately testified against Colbert and White, whose sentencing was tentatively scheduled for 28 September. Anderson pleaded guilty to lesser charges of simple robbery and fraud in exchange for a six-year prison sentence.

Negligent homicide can carry up to 10 years in prison. Racketeering can carry up to 50 years’ imprisonment.

Separately, after Manzano’s death but before her trial, Colbert received a 25-year prison sentence for violating her probation on a prior theft and fraud conviction and being classified a habitual offender.

Hinck spoke in between the Colbert–White and Armstrong trials about battling to shield Eleanor from the particulars of the legal fallout surrounding her parents’ death.

“We don’t talk about it with her,” Hinck said in reference to his granddaughter. “The only thing she knows is her mom and dad are in heaven, and she will see them one day.”