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A suspect has been finally charged 34 years after a fatal hit-and-run in North Carolina after DNA testing on a marijuana cigarette.
Charlotte–Mecklenburg Police Department announced that Herbert Stanback, 68, had been charged with felony hit-and-run in the death of 52-year-old Ruth Buchanan on 29 December 1989.
Buchanan had just left a department store with a friend in Charlotte’s Uptown neighborhood around 4pm. When the pair crossed a busy intersection, Buchanan was hit by a dark-colored vehicle after the car failed to stop at a red light.
The driver did not stop to render aid and fled the scene, police said in a news release. The woman’s body landed on the opposite side of the intersection.
Buchanan was then transported to Charlotte Memorial Hospital with serious injuries, which she succumbed to the following day.
Several witnesses were able to confirm the vehicle’s description and provided the vehicle tag number for the car that hit Buchanan. Detectives who worked the case that year determined that the car had a stolen tag from a Mercedes Benz and the luxury vehicle was not tied to the incident.
On January 1, 1990, officials responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle at a Comfort Inn. The tag on the car matched the description of the vehicle that struck Buchanan, a 1990 Mitsubishi Galant.
Officials retrieved personal items from inside the car, including what they believed to be a marijuana joint. However, the case sat open for 32 years. In 2022, Sergeant Gavin Jackson received a Crime Stoppers tip from a person claiming to know the suspect connected with the crash.
Though the tipster had gotten some of the details right, the suspect they mentioned was not connected with the incident. Officers then ultimately decided to put the marijuana cigarette through DNA testing. The results came back positive for Stanback.
But, officials hit another roadblock upon discovering Stanback was incarcerated when the incident took place. He is still incarcerated with the Department of Adult Corrections in North Carolina. Officials later went to visit him in prison, where he provided a full confession to the crime.
Stanback had been participating in a work release program at the time of the incident. Inmates would leave in the morning and come back in the evening. He had just gotten off his shift at a hotel close to the site of the incident when he struck the woman.
He later dumped the car at the Comfort Inn and returned to prison that night, Jackson said.
“It’s a once in a career type thing,” said the officer. “Very rewarding feeling just to be able to notify the family of something like that. 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 added that the development signifies how important DNA technology is to police investigative efforts.
“Of course, not every case is going to be solved this way, but you never know what’s going to happen 20, 30 or 35 years down the line.”
