Police: Decades-old marijuana joint IDs suspect in 1989 uptown Charlotte hit and run

A marijuana joint preserved for 34 years in a police evidence room led to the arrest of a 68-year-old man in the 1989 hit-and-run death of a shopper in uptown Charlotte, police said Friday.

Ruth Buchanan and a friend had just left a department store when a driver ran a red light and hit 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 that detailed the investigation.

Buchanan died the next day at a hospital.

Buchanan lived in Forest City and was shopping for clothes in uptown 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 on Friday. The car was stolen from a Charlotte auto dealership, Jackson said.

But a lack of evidence kept the case unsolved for more than three decades.

Car recovered at Charlotte hotel

On Jan. 1, 1990, officers responded to a call 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 tag identified by witnesses in the hit and run.

Officers recovered a marijuana joint and other evidence from the car. Yet, “due to a lack of further evidence,” the case remained opened for 32 years, police said.

In early 2022, a caller on the Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line identified a man the caller believed was involved in the wreck, police said.

Police soon determined the man wasn’t the driver, Jackson said.

Positive DNA hit

During the investigation into the anonymous tip, CMPD’s Crime Lab analyzed evidence from the Mitsubishi Galant and concluded that the marijuana joint “was probably the best (item) to try and test for DNA,” Jackson said.

“The challenge we had is the positive hit of DNA came back to 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 get to the bottom of this” was to speak with Stanback at Scotland Correctional Institution in Laurinburg. He is serving a 22-year sentence for an unrelated crime, police said.

Police interviewed Stanback during two visits to the prison. “On our second visit, he did provide a full confession as to his involvement in this incident,” Jackson said.

Stanback was on a work-release program when he is accused of hitting Buchanan, Jackson said. He left prison in the morning and returned at night. He worked at a hotel a block or two from the wreck scene, the sergeant said.

After the second interview, police got an arrest warrant charging Stanback with 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-career type thing.”

“Very rewarding feeling, just to be able to notify the family of something like that,” he said. “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.”

“I think this stands as an example — 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,” Jackson said.

Linking DNA to a person that long ago “is amazing, it really is,” he said.

Still, Jackson credited witnesses in the case.

“We don’t get to where we get without people coming forward, people staying on the scene,” he said. “Between the information they give us and the amount of detail taken down by the initial responding officers, those are key for us to be able to get success in any kind of case.”