DNA from marijuana joint leads to driver in 1989 Charlotte hit-and-run : NPR

Over the past three decades, it remained a mystery who drove the car that struck and killed 52-year-old Ruth Buchanan as she attempted to cross a street in Charlotte, N.C.

Even though police knew the car’s license plate number and what it looked like, the vehicle turned out to be stolen and the investigation reached a standstill. The case would have stayed cold indefinitely if not for modern DNA tools.

On Friday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said a suspect, Herbert Stanback, 68, was identified and charged in connection to the hit-and-run case from 1989 — adding that a major breakthrough came from using new DNA technology to reexamine the evidence in the case.

“The fact that the scientific means of being able to obtain DNA, linking it — not to a specific gene pool — but a specific individual over three decades later is amazing,” Sgt. Gavin Jackson with CMPD’s Major Crash Unit said in an announcement video.

A few days before New Year’s Eve in 1989, around mid-afternoon, Buchanan and her friend had just left a department store in Charlotte’s business district when Buchanan was struck by a car on the street, according to a CMPD press release.

The police added that the driver had run a red light and immediately fled the scene. Buchanan was taken to the hospital where she died the next day from her injuries.

Witnesses gave police a detailed account of the car, including its license plate number. A few days later, officers responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle outside a Comfort Inn, which fit the description of the car involved in the collision. The vehicle later turned out to be stolen from a local car dealership and the case remained unsolved for the next 32 years.

Then, in 2022, law enforcement received an anonymous tip who claimed to know the man who committed the hit-and-run. That proved to be false, but it did spur officers to take another look at the case.

The detectives sent evidence previously recovered from the car to the police crime lab, where they matched DNA from a marijuana cigarette to a man who at the time was serving a 22-year sentence for a separate crime, police said.

Detectives learned that the driver, Stanback, was working at a local hotel at the time of the hit-and-run as part of a work-release program for inmates at the state prison.

In March, detectives met with Stanback in prison where he confessed to the crime. In June, he was formally charged. Jackson, the police sergeant, said he later notified Buchanan’s son about the arrest.

“I was able to speak to Ruth’s son and be able to bring that kind of closure to the family. It’s certainly not a phone call that they would have been expecting,” Jackson said.