A marijuana joint stored in a police evidence room for 34 years led to the arrest of a 68-year-old man in connection with the 1989 hit-and-run that killed a customer in downtown Charlotte, police said Friday.
Ruth Buchanan and a friend were leaving a department store when a driver ran a red light and struck the 52-year-old in a crosswalk on North Tryon Street at Fifth Street, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Sgt. Gavin Jackson said in a police video detailing the investigation.
Buchanan died the next day in hospital.
Buchanan lived in Forest City and was in Uptown shopping for clothes for a New Year’s trip to Florida, The Charlotte Observer reported at the time.
“Fifteen minutes after arriving, she lay dying on busy North Tryon Street – battered by a driver who ran a red light at 45 mph and never stopped,” the Observer reported.
Witnesses described the car to police and gave officers the license plate number, according to a police news release Friday. The car had been stolen from a Charlotte dealership, Jackson said.
But due to lack of evidence, the case remained unsolved for more than thirty years.
Car found at hotel in Charlotte
On Jan. 1, 1990, officers responded to a report of a suspicious car at a Comfort Inn in the 4400 block of South Tryon Street, Jackson said.
Police found a dark blue 1990 Mitsubishi Galant with the stolen license plate, which had been identified by witnesses at the collision.
Officers found a marijuana joint and other evidence in the car, but the case remained open for 32 years, police said, “due to a lack of further evidence.”
In early 2022, a caller to Crime Stoppers’ anonymous tip line identified a man he believed was involved in the crash, police said.
Police quickly determined the man was not the driver, Jackson said.
Positive DNA hit
While investigating the anonymous tip, CMPD’s forensic lab analyzed evidence from the Mitsubishi Galant and concluded that the marijuana joint was “probably the best (item) to try to test for DNA,” Jackson said.
“The challenge we had was that the positive DNA hit came back on an individual named Herbert Stanback,” Jackson said. “At the time this incident occurred, he was incarcerated at a place called Charlotte Correctional, which no longer exists.”
Earlier this year, Jackson thought “the only real way to find out” was to talk to Stanback at Scotland Correctional Institution in Laurinburg, where he is serving a 22-year sentence for an unrelated crime, police said.
Police interviewed Stanback during two visits to the jail. “On our second visit, he made a full confession about his involvement in this incident,” Jackson said.
Stanback was in a work-release program when he was accused of beating Buchanan, Jackson said. He left the jail in the morning and returned in the evening. He worked at a hotel a block or two from the scene of the wreck, the sergeant said.
After the second interrogation, police obtained an arrest warrant charging Stanback with a felony hit and run. In June, he was taken to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office and formally charged in the case.
Witnesses came forward, police say
Jackson called the arrest “a once in a lifetime thing.”
“It’s a very satisfying feeling, just to be able to let the family know about something like that,” he said. “I was able to talk to Ruth’s son and give the family some closure. It’s definitely not a call they were expecting.”
“I think this is an example. Obviously not every case will be solved this way, but you never know what’s going to happen 20, 30, 35 years from now,” Jackson said.
Linking DNA to a person who originated so long ago is “astonishing, it really is,” he said.
Still, Jackson acknowledged the testimony in the case.
“We don’t get to where we are without people coming forward, people staying on the scene,” he said. “The information that they give us and the amount of detail that the first responding officers take down is the key to us being able to be successful in any case.”
