PD makes arrest in Phoenix cold case

PHOENIX - Police have made an arrest nearly 34 years after a man was stabbed to death on a Phoenix street during a car theft.

Seventy-one-year-old Manuel Corona was arrested February 2 while in custody in a Tucson prison on unrelated charges.

Phoenix police say that on February 9, 1978, John B. Bryant was stabbed to death near Central Avenue and Indian School Road during the robbery of his vehicle.

The case was worked by detectives at the time but eventually went cold, according to police.

During the spring of 2011 the Cold Case Squad reopened the case as part of a review of unsolved cases from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Detectives were able to take evidence obtained during the initial investigation 33 years ago and submit it for testing with technology that did not exist back then.

Police say a "forensic hit" pointed investigators to Corona, who was in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections in Tucson.

Corona was arrested and has been booked into the Maricopa County Jail for Bryant's murder.