North Carolina inmate admits to hit-and-run in 1989 while on parole

Just four days after Christmas 1989, 52-year-old mother Ruth Buchanan was crossing a street in Charlotte, North Carolina, after leaving a department store with a friend when she was struck by a driver who ran a red light.

“Her body landed on the opposite side of the intersection and the vehicle, according to witnesses, did not stop, render aid and continued to flee the scene of the accident,” said Sergeant Gavin Jackson of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department's major accident unit in a video police released Friday.

Buchanan died in hospital the next day.

Decades after the case fell apart and was reopened with the help of DNA technology, Buchanan's killer, Herbert Stanback, now 68, confessed to the crime that had taken place 35 years ago.

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Although witnesses were given a vehicle description and license plate, it turned out that the license plate of the Mercedes with which the vehicles were associated had been stolen and was not the car that struck Buchanan.

Three days later, on New Year's Day 1990, investigators found a black Mitsubishi in front of a Comfort Inn with damage matching the description of the suspect's vehicle, Jackson said.

Investigators confirmed it was the suspect's vehicle and found personal items inside, including a marijuana cigarette.

After a failed lead in the case in 2022, it was reopened, and DNA from the cigarette was tested and matched that of Herbert Stanback, who was already incarcerated on another charge in the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections.

The stolen car Stanback allegedly used to hit Buchanan was found in a Charlotte motel days after the crime. (Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department; WSOC-TV)

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Records showed that Stanback was incarcerated in a Charlotte prison that no longer exists.

In his second interview with investigators in March, Stanback made a “full confession,” Jackson said.

“Interestingly, he was in the Charlotte Correctional [at the time of the hit-and-run]but he was on a work release program at the time – where people would leave in the morning and come back in the evening – and he was working at a hotel a block or two up the street,” Jackson said.

Stanback returned to prison after beating Buchanan and escaping.

“This is a once in a career thing,” Jackson said. “It's a very satisfying feeling to be able to inform the family about something like this. I was able to talk to Ruth's son and give the family this kind of closure. It's certainly not a call they were expecting.”

Stanback made a “full confession” to police in March. (iStock)

“I think that's an example – of course not every case will be solved that way – but you never know what's going to happen in 20, 25, 30 years. And the fact that it was possible, through scientific means, to obtain DNA and link it, over three decades later, not to a specific gene pool but to a specific individual, is amazing. Really.”

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He added that witness statements and initial reports from police officers who responded in 1989 were also crucial in solving Buchanan's death.

Stanback pleaded guilty to hit-and-run causing serious injury or death, police said in a press release.

He was sentenced to two years in prison, which he must serve concurrently with a 22-year sentence he is already serving for another crime at the Scotland Correctional Institution in Laurinburg, North Carolina, the agency and WSOC-TV reported.