Adan Manzano was in New Orleans to cover Super Bowl LIX, but the sports reporter was found dead in his hotel room before kickoff. Police are trying to figure out what happened and what, if anything, “a career criminal” police say is known to run fraud schemes in the city’s French Quarter had to do with his death.

Rising sports journalist Adan Manzano passed away Feb. 5 while on assignment covering the Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans. He was 27.

Everyone in the class was assigned to write an autobiography, which would provide the professor with a writing sample and some background on her students as another semester began. The introductory assignment was the perfect way for University of Mississippi professor Summer Hill-Vinson to meet the new crop of students in Journalism 102.