Greensboro, NC -- A new twist in a three-year-old murder case sounds like a crime show on television.
In 2008, just ten days before Christmas, someone shot and killed armored truck driver Juan Salado as he picked up money at the Old Navy in the Friendly Shopping Center in Greensboro.
Police got several tips from Crimestoppers that identified Isaam Chaplin as the shooter and matched his palm prints to prints found at the scene. If found guilty, Chaplin faces the death penalty at trial.
Jury selection started this week. However, on Tuesday everything came to a halt after the discovery of a new piece of evidence. The district attorney believes they've found the gun used in the murder.
While Greensboro Police could not comment on the case, they did show News 2's Lauren Melvin how they link guns to a crime inside the department's crime lab.
Inside the forensics room, the CSI division of the Greensboro Police Department uses a system called IBIS or Integrated Ballistic Identification System.
When investigators recover a bullet at a crime scene, they take a digital picture and enter it into the IBIS database.
When a gun is fired it leaves a unique mark on each bullet, similar to a fingerprint. So when investigators find a gun, they can test fire it to see if it those bullets match bullets in the database.
"So, if you have multiple projectiles that were fired from the same weapon, even if you don't have the weapon, you would be able to determine that they were all fired from the same weapon," said Karen Weimorts, who works in the CSI division.
Police and sheriff departments across the country use IBIS. In the past, the crime lab at the Greensboro Police Department has actually been able to link bullets using during a crime to two shootings in Maryland and a murder in Washington, D.C.
In the case of the Old Navy Murder, with new evidence, the case has been re-opened. However, Major Tom Sheppard with the Guilford County Sheriff's Department said a case is never really closed.
According to Sheppard, It's not unheard of for evidence to turn up after investigators have a suspect or even after someone has been convicted. In fact, the term "closed case" or "inactive" is really just what police use internally to say they're not working on any new leads. However, in a serious crime like a murder, any clue can be a big one.
"When new evidence comes in like this, I think it's prudent for the prosecution and the judge to delay the case because after all, it's called justice. And we want justice for the community and the person being tried," said Sheppard.
Sheppard said some cases can take weeks, months and even years to solve.
Greensboro police are now testing the new evidence, the gun, in the Old Navy murder case. Officials said testing could take a few months.