BLAINE - A Blaine man was charged this week with injecting a 16-year-old girl with methamphetamine three times because he said she was "constantly bugging him" to let her use the drug.
Daniel Lee Svege, 21, admitted in a written statement he smoked meth with the girl in a public restroom at Lake Whatcom on June 6, according to prosecutors.
Then they went to a Birch Bay home and bought more of the drug, intending to smoke it. But when Svege couldn't find a pipe, he picked up a used syringe and injected himself with meth. The girl was "bugging" him to shoot her up, too, prosecutors alleged, so he injected her twice in the right arm with the same dirty syringe.
The girl had been reported as a runaway by her mother, said Blaine police spokeswoman Lisa Moeller. She was found and returned home the following morning.
On June 9, the girl told her mother Svege had injected her with the drug a total of three times, according to the charges. Police were called to help take her to St. Joseph hospital. Officers saw needle marks and bruises on both of her arms.
But police had trouble tracking down Svege - until June 11 when he was caught stealing spendy DVD box sets from Walmart, according to Bellingham police.
A security guard stopped Svege after surveillance footage showed him walking through the store with a large bulge under his sweatshirt. He had used a Stanley box cutter to remove the security tags, the charges alleged.
Two men - Trever Rene Jimenez, 19, and Tanner Alan Larson, 20 -also were arrested in the thefts, along with a boy younger than 16 years old.
Svege told police he planned to resell the DVDs so he could afford Suboxone, a drug used to treat recovering heroin addicts, according to the charges.
A couple of days after being released on bond for the theft charges, Svege was booked into jail again when police established probable cause to arrest him for giving the teen meth. The girl confirmed everything in Svege's written confession, prosecutors said.
Svege is charged, in separate cases, with distributing meth to a person younger than 18 and retail theft with extenuating circumstances.
His criminal record dates back to malicious burning at age 14. He also has a history of vehicle prowling and burglary.
Reach CALEB HUTTON at caleb.hutton@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2276.
