A Hickory man will serve six to eight years in prison for a trafficking conviction from a plea entered in Catawba County Superior Court on Monday, March 9, 2026.
Christopher David Buchanan, 45, was given the active sentence by the Honorable Nathaniel J. Poovey, Superior Court Judge from Catawba County, following his guilty plea to trafficking methamphetamine by possession and transportation. The defendant also was assessed a mandatory fine of $50,000.
Buchanan will serve his period of incarceration in custody of the North Carolina Division of Adult Corrections.
A traffic stop was conducted on a vehicle by the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office on September 5, 2024, that led to a K-9 alert to the presence of drugs that were located in a bookbag found in the vehicle’s trunk.
The stop was initiated because of an improperly attached license plate. When the K-9 alerted to drugs, two bags of a white substance were found in the bookbag along with credit cards in Buchanan’s name. Pills also were located in a tub found in the trunk.
The State Crime Lab confirmed that the recovered substances were a trafficking amount of methamphetamine.
Grayson Cameron and Dillon Ward handled the investigation for the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Greer prosecuted the matter for the State with aid from Legal Assistant Stacey London.