A former surgery nurse at a Boulder hospital was sentenced Friday to 4 1/2 years in federal prison for using needles, intended for patients, to steal pain medication.
Ashton Daigle, 28, pleaded guilty in June to four counts of tampering with a consumer product and one count of creating a counterfeit controlled substance, after reaching a deal with prosecutors to drop 173 other charges.
Daigle received the minimum sentence requested by prosecutors, but he could have faced up to 70 years in prison for stealing pain medication meant for up to 290 patients at Boulder Community Hospital in fall 2008.
“He was playing Russian roulette with their lives,” prosecutor Jaime Pena said in U.S. District Court in Denver on Friday. “He knew what he was doing. He knew the risks.”
Two patients from the hospital addressed the court Friday to talk about pain they experienced when Daigle stole their medication. As one of the patients cried, Daigle did too.
Daigle also addressed the court, saying he was ashamed of his actions and that he let the nursing profession down.
“I became a nurse because I wanted to help people, and I found myself doing the exact opposite,” Daigle said.
He detailed his struggles with depression and addiction and said the access to medication was too great for him. He said that a week before his arrest he told his wife of his addiction and spent a week quitting the drug cold turkey.
Prosecutors said Daigle began using the drug fentanyl, a painkiller 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine, from discarded syringes left on operating room carts. They said he also took vials from a regulated dispensing machine and used a syringe to siphon out the drug.
Prosecutors say Daigle sometimes used the same needle to inject himself, then refilled the vial with saline or tap water, putting patients at risk.
In a similar case, a surgical technician was convicted of stealing painkillers by using syringes on herself, then leaving the dirty needles to be reused on patients. Kristen Diane Parker exposed about 6,000 patients at two Colorado hospitals to hepatitis C. About three dozen have been confirmed infected. She was sentenced in February to 30 years in prison.
The Boulder hospital said Daigle has tested negative three times for blood-borne pathogens, including HIV and hepatitis.
