BELLINGHAM - Two Bellingham heroin dealers were sentenced to prison Thursday, Jan. 3.
Christina Tomasita Deming, 29, was given a sentence of seven years and six months for dealing heroin and jumping bail. Joseph Harrison McCormack, 32, must serve three years and four months for drug crimes.
Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Ira Uhrig ordered both to serve drug offender sentencing alternatives, so half of the time is spent behind bars and the other half is spent in treatment and on probation.
Within the past year, Deming and McCormack were each charged three times with dealing or having drugs.
• Police saw McCormack doing a drug deal in his Chevy Tahoe in Bellingham's Lettered Streets in September 2011. In the SUV officers found a backpack with a 20-gram "ball of a brownish tarry substance" inside, according to charging documents. They also found a small bag of methamphetamine. McCormack was arrested a few months later after the drugs tested positive in a crime lab.
• A police informant bought heroin from Deming at her apartment in the 1400 block of Lincoln Street in January 2012. She was arrested a day later when police got a search warrant.
• In April, detectives followed McCormack's Chevy Tahoe from a Mount Vernon parking lot - where police witnessed an apparent drug deal - to a Moore Street apartment in Bellingham. About $16,000 worth of methamphetamine and heroin was later found in the home, along with digital scales, "crib notes" used to record sales and several hundred small plastic bags. Deming and McCormack were arrested together.
• They were arrested again July 12. She had a syringe loaded with heroin in her purse; he had about a half-ounce of heroin in a pocket of his cargo pants.
They pleaded guilty to several counts of possession and delivery of drugs.
Neither chose to speak at their sentencings Thursday.
Reach CALEB HUTTON at caleb.hutton@bellinghamherald.com or call 715-2276.
