An 18-year-old Oak Harbor woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend could end up in prison, according to court documents.
Colleen Kenimond, the Island County chief criminal prosecutor, amended a charge March 10 against Irene Burleson in Superior Court. She added a deadly weapons enhancement to the original charge of second-degree assault, which would add a year to the sentence if Burleson is convicted.
Previously, Burleson was facing a standard sentence range of three to nine months in jail if convicted of the assault charge.
On July 28 of last year, Oak Harbor police officers responded to a report that a man had been stabbed in the chest at an apartment on NE Seventh Avenue. Officers found a 19-year-old man with a knife wound in his chest, according to a report by Oak Harbor Detective Carl Seim.
In a recorded interview, Burleson said she stabbed her boyfriend with a seven-inch knife she grabbed from a kitchen drawer, Seim wrote. She said they were arguing and she threatened to light his boxer shorts on fire. The man stopped her by grabbing her by the neck, the report states, so she ran inside. She took a knife from a drawer and stabbed him, Seim wrote.
The victim was transported to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for treatment. He lost three liters of blood, Seim wrote, and surgeons had to put a stint in an artery to stop the bleeding.