you know, that can help find out who did it. >> there's a lot of technology if things are done right, everything falls into place. and sometimes a little bit of luck helps. a small texas community mourned the tragic death of an outstanding high school athlete and scholar. at first, there wasn't much hope that the killer would be apprehended, but tiny paint chips and bits of plastic provided evidence far more accurate than an eyewitness. san antonio is one of the fastest growing cities in texas, which in turn, required the construction of one of the most sophisticated systems of state highways in the country. unfortunately, increased traffic often means increased fatalities.

and one of those tragic cases was that of a teenage boy found one morning near highway 281. >> no one deserves to die on the side of the road alone, even if their last breaths are those that are shared with a stranger. >> it looked to investigators like he had been hit head on by a motor vehicle. >> the abrasions to the person, the absence of socks on the feet, and appeared to have rolled down the roadway, which is all conducive to being hit by a motor vehicle. >> the boy's shoes were discovered up the hill on highway 281, along with a sock and a broken neck chain, but there was no evidence to show how fast the vehicle had been going. >> cannot generally tell that by the force of the impact that the individual's knocked out of his shoes. for some reason, it's a common occurrence with motor vehicle and pedestrian accidents. >> police identified the victim as 17-year-old rafael garcia, a

football player and standout student at southside high school in south-central texas. >> i was shocked. i thought it was just a dream, i was going to wake up from it, because honestly, you know, you just talked to the person the day before. he said, yeah, i'll be there at football practice, this and that. and then, all of a sudden, he's gone? >> rafael was one of six children raised by a single mother. his family was poor, and rafael worked weekends to help support his family. mike harrison was rafael's football coach. he broke the news of rafael's death to the rest of the team. >> one of the hardest jobs as a teacher and coach is to look at a group of young men that you've grown close to and then tell them that one of their teammates is not going to be there anymore. and it just devastated our kids. they cried so hard, and just for the next week to ten days, it was pure emotion for them.

>> from body temperature and degree of rigor mortis, investigators estimated rafael had been killed around midnight. since no one reported the accident, it was officially listed as a hit-and-run fatality. on the highway, investigators found evidence of where rafael was standing when hit. >> it was clear from the debris field that rafael was, in fact, on the side of that road. there's no evidence at all that rafael was walking in the lane or even close to the lane of travel. >> there were no skid marks, indicating the driver had not tried to stop before or after the crash. they did find broken pieces of glass and plastic, as well as seven tiny, red paint chips on the shoulder of the road and in the grass.

they also found a broken sideview mirror. >> all the deposited parts were clean. they didn't have a lot of dust on them. they hadn't been rained on, it didn't appear. so, we believe that they are all linked to the same crash. >> to be able to find these at a busy road intersection where the crime was committed is a task in itself. >> but investigators weren't optimistic, since most hit-and-run accidents go unsolved. >> anything that involves a motor vehicle, and almost everybody owns a motor vehicle, it's almost like finding a needle in a haystack. t my sinus. it's time for advil cold and sinus. [ male announcer ] truth is that won't relieve all your symptoms. new alka seltzer plus-d relieves more symptoms than any other behind the counter liquid gel. oh what a relief it is.

hundreds of people turned out for rafael garcia's funeral. he was remembered as an athlete who put his studies before sports. >> when it came to rafael, his education came first, even before football. i remember there was one time where he didn't go to practice because he had a late assignment. >> he was a good person, and there's a lot of people here, a lot, and we're just going to miss him. >> we want to know that the person who did this is facing

the consequences for that and not able to just get away with, you know, taking a life. >> the autopsy revealed that rafael suffered a fractured skull and other blunt force trauma to the head. this suggested that he was facing the oncoming traffic when he was hit. the medical examiner also found large, bar-shaped bruises on rafael's thighs. they looked as if they might have come from the front grill of a truck or suv. >> it was sort of a pattern injury. part of the grill hit the right thigh, and he was probably wrapped around the side of the truck, and the other part of the grill hit the left thigh. >> toxicology tests for drugs and alcohol were all negative, but why was rafael walking along highway 281 late at night?

investigators discovered that rafael's friend dropped him off at home around 10:00 p.m., but the friend said rafael didn't go inside. instead, he started walking toward highway 281. >> he was known to walk down to what they refer to as the corner store, which is, they're kind of out in the country, so it's a ways down. he didn't have -- he didn't own a car. he didn't have his own car to drive, so he was usually walking out there. >> rafael was hit and killed on highway 281, just a quarter mile from his home. the only clues to the driver's identity were tiny bits of glass, plastic, and red paint. presumably from the vehicle's front headlight and turn signal. detective jose trevino worked in the auto industry before going into law enforcement.

he was particularly interested in the passenger side mirror with a built-in heating element found near rafael's body. >> i recognized it as a chrysler emblem, so therefore, it led me to believe it was a chrysler vehicle. >> by checking the part number, investigators learned that the mirror came from a dodge ram pickup truck manufactured between 1999 and 2002. >> to most people outside the auto industry, those numbers wouldn't mean much. to an engineer, these codes are much like identifications, such as your social security number or even dna. >> although this narrowed the search considerably, these trucks were extremely popular. >> seemed like a needle in a haystack, because now it's a dodge pickup truck, very commonly used in texas. it narrows it down to have the year range, but still, there's so many.

and i thought maybe it was impossible to find it. >> but investigators could narrow it down further since they knew the dodge ram pickup truck was red. police used local media outlets to ask vehicle body shops as well as concerned citizens to be on the lookout for a red dodge pickup truck with damage to the front end. strangely, none of the local body shops reported a red truck coming in for repairs. police also issued a bulletin to all police departments nationwide in an effort to find the red truck. but the first tip that came in was from one of rafael's classmates. >> he said that his mother's boyfriend came home that night of the accident, of the crash, and had said that he hit a deer on the highway and the police

were going to get him, and that he took off and hadn't been seen since. >> the man's name was robert huffman, a 49-year-old construction worker. vehicle records indicated huffman drove a red dodge pickup truck made in the year 2000. according to huffman's girlfriend, he disappeared the morning following the accident and she had no idea where he went. >> time is of the essence when you're trying to solve these crimes. and knowing that the truck is your big piece of evidence and knowing that it's out there driving around in the elements, which means you're losing physical evidence. >> making matters worse, huffman didn't have any credit cards or an atm card, so police couldn't track his whereabouts. >> we should never lose hope on these cases, because you just never know what information may come forward, who may call in, what could be found, even years later. [ as schwarzenegger ] show me the movies with the arnold schwarzenegger

with the stunts and loud explosions and all the muscles.

[ as cosby ] i want to see the comedy programming with the children. [ british accent] watch bravo! yeah, i want to see "the real housewives." rewind! yeah! jimmy? it's been hours. we told you the x1 entertainment operating system show me "the tonight show starring jimmy fallon." that's what i'm talking about right there. [ cheers and applause ] [ female announcer ] control your tv with your voice. the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. the prime suspect in the hit-and-run death of 17-year-old rafael garcia was robert huffman, a construction worker who owned the type of truck police were looking for. a background check revealed huffman had two previous convictions for drunk driving

and he had just finished serving a two-year sentence for a weapons offense. the media attention prompted an anonymous tip. someone told police that huffman was at a local bar on the night of rafael's death. >> the media put out the description of the truck. she phoned in. she said that she knew he had been at the bar that night. he had left between 10:30 and 11:00, and he was driving this huge, red truck in the direction where rafael garcia was ultimately killed. >> huffman left town immediately following the accident, and his whereabouts were unknown. >> i have to say, it's kind of heartless, you know? i mean, knowing you killed someone and just running. i mean, you don't -- i guess he really wasn't, like, the fact that there's a family involved? >> for weeks, there was no progress. then, almost three months later,

investigators got another tip. this time from a police officer 1,000 miles away in sumner county, tennessee. he noticed a red pickup truck with texas plates in the parking lot of a seedy motel. a man matching huffman's description was registered in the motel under a different name. >> he gave the name of robert hokam, which later he admitted to the authorities was not really his true name. so, initially, they had him detained for providing a false name. >> huffman denied any involvement in the hit-and-run death of rafael garcia and, once again, claimed he hit a deer. when police looked at his vehicle they noticed that the passenger side headlight was intact, as was the plastic cover on the turn signal. >> after all this time that had passed, 2 1/2 months, the trip

to tennessee yielded no evidence, no forensic evidence. >> but investigators had the seven chips of red paint from the crime scene. was it possible that they were from huffman's truck? martinez measured the seven paint chips. each one was approximately a half inch in length. martinez and his colleagues noticed something. there were places on the front bumper of huffman's truck where the paint was missing. so, martinez started the painstaking process of trying to match the paint chips to the truck scratches. >> i wasn't sure exactly where it was going to match up specifically, so it was almost as if it was a game, trying to find and put the piece of the jigsaw puzzle back to match that area where it came from on that vehicle. >> the pieces were jagged, and

so was the exposed metal on the truck. unbelievably, martinez discovered that the paint chips did come from huffman's truck. they fit perfectly. >> a physical fit is the only for sure thing in forensic science. its probabilities are astronomical. there were no statistics that can calculate or duplicate the odds of tearing any two pieces identical. it is the only thing that's in forensics that is the for sure thing and, in fact, better than dna. >> here's this paint chip that plugs in perfectly. that's hitting the home run in the bottom of the ninth, based loaded. >> but investigators still wondered, if huffman's vehicle hit rafael garcia, why wasn't there any damage to the head light and turn signal? they found the answer to that question in his storage shed

back in texas. >> we went to robert huffman's house, and in the back shed we saw a '95 maroon dodge truck that was missing the passenger side turn signal light. >> apparently, huffman owned a second pickup truck, a 1995 dodge ram. interestingly, the 1995 model was similar to his red 2000 model, so much so that the headlamps on both trucks were dimensionally identical. >> the length, the width, the depth, all those features, the mounting points, they are all in the same location. we took a 2000 model year truck, we removed the headlamp module, and we inserted a 1995 headlamp module, and the two fit perfectly. >> but even with this evidence, the case wasn't over. prosecutors now had to prove to the jury that huffman was the

driver. >> with hit-and-run crashes, if you're able to locate the vehicle, that's just half the battle, because now we have to prove who this person is that was driving at the time, because it may not necessarily be the owner of the vehicle. [ as schwarzenegger ] show me the movies with the arnold schwarzenegger

with the stunts and loud explosions and all the muscles. [ as cosby ] i want to see the comedy programming with the children. [ british accent] watch bravo! yeah, i want to see "the real housewives." rewind! yeah! jimmy? it's been hours. we told you the x1 entertainment operating system show me "the tonight show starring jimmy fallon." that's what i'm talking about right there. [ cheers and applause ] [ female announcer ] control your tv with your voice. the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity.

although investigators could prove that robert huffman's red truck was the vehicle that killed rafael garcia, they still needed to prove to a jury that huffman was driving the vehicle. to do that, investigators had to tie huffman's whereabouts on the night of the fatal crash to rafael garcia's. rafael's friend said she dropped him off at home around 10:00 p.m., but rafael didn't go inside. instead, he started walking back towards highway 281, presumably headed to the country store a short distance away. patrons of a local bar indicated that huffman was there drinking that night and left the bar sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 p.m.

a bar patron said that huffman got into his red pickup truck and headed south on route 281 towards his home. rafael was walking north on route 281 at approximately the same time. the forensic evidence proves that huffman's truck swerved off the road, onto the shoulder, and hit rafael, sending him flying 40 feet down the embankment, killing him instantly. there were no skid marks. prosecutors say huffman kept driving. but tiny pieces of glass, plastic and paint, along with the passenger side mirror, were left behind, identifying the make, model, and color of the truck. when he got home, he told his girlfriend that he had hit a deer and removed the broken

headlight and replaced it with the headlight unit from his other truck. he fled the state the next day, driving 1,000 miles to tennessee, hoping the case would blow over and be forgotten. but by this time, too many law enforcement agencies were looking for him. >> all the planets were aligned because it was every single little piece of evidence together that made this such a strong case. and it just -- everything fell into place. >> the paint chips at the scene fit perfectly to huffman's truck. and the truck's grill also matched rafael's injuries. >> you could almost compare the height of the grill on that truck to the height of where the bruises were located on rafael,

and they matched up almost perfectly. >> in february of 2006, robert huffman was tried and convicted of failure to stop and render aid after an accident. because of his previous drunk driving offenses, he was sentenced to the maximum, 20 years in prison. >> he never confessed, never showed any remorse, and was rather indignant about the fact that he was being tried for this offense. >> investigators say that without the science, this case, like most hit-and-run accidents, would probably have gone unsolved. >> to be able to establish a physical match is a rare find. to be able to actually solve a case and to obtain a conviction is even rarer. >> it just, to me, shows the determination of law enforcement to leave no stone unturned and to really look at the scene, and they did a great job, obviously, of evidence collection in this

case, and it really, really helped this case along. >> i'd say one in a million. like i said, it's a miracle. by the grace of god, you know, by the grace of god, you know, they found it. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com breaking overnight, ukraine on the brink. russian troops moving into the country while the rest of the world chooses sides. the new steps the u.s. is taking this morning and the key ally russia may have picked up overnight. right now, brutal winter storm pummeling the east. millions waking up to snow and ice, being warned, stay off the roads. schools and offices shut down, thousands of flights already grounded this morning. our indra petersons is live tracking this latest winter storm for us. and while you were sleeping, it ended, just minutes ago. hollywood honoring its best