Deputies catch 26-year fugitive

A man on the run for 26 years is now behind bars in New Hanover County. The Sheriff’s Office arrested Charles Lee Sparks yesterday.

The Social Security Administration says he applied for benefits using the identity of a Virginia man who died in 1983. They say Sparks got a Georgia driver license in the name of William Bolyn Garrett a month after Garrett died, then got a North Carolina license in 2008.

Fingerprint records turned up Sparks’s real identity. Investigators say the 69-year-old has been a fugitive since escaping one year into a 20-year sentence for drug trafficking.

Sparks is in the New Hanover County jail without bond.