Meth Lab Operator Gets 5 Years Freeman Asks For Treatment To Help Kick Addiction; Eligible For Parole In Two Years

When state narcotics agents raided David Freeman’s home, his young son did not have to ask officers why they were there.

They had come, the boy told officers, “because the stuff Daddy makes blows up sometimes,” Deputy Prosecutor Joel Hazel said Wednesday.

First District Court Judge James Judd sentenced Freeman to five years in prison for his part in operating a methamphetamine lab out of his Government Way home last fall. The 34-year-old Coeur d’Alene man will become eligible for parole after serving two years.

Hazel recommended Judd extend Freeman’s term to 10 years because the man’s son and daughter, both in elementary school, were home when officers rushed their father’s rental house. Freeman’s daughter said she often got sick when she stayed with her father.

Freeman asked the judge to send him to in-patient drug treatment to help him kick an addiction to intravenous drugs that he had been too ashamed to admit he had.

“I am a drug addict,” Freeman said. “I’ve been wanting to get some help for awhile. I’ve just been in denial.”

Agents from the state Criminal Investigations Bureau, specially trained to detect and dismantle methamphetamine labs, said the drug was cooking when they kicked in the door to Freeman’s home on Nov. 12. Freeman’s children looked on while officers arrested their father and two other men.

Graig Sharnetski, 34, also has since pleaded guilty to his involvement with the drug lab. Drug charges are pending against Michael Phelan, 38.

Additional charges of manufacturing a controlled substance and trafficking in methamphetamine against Freeman were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea.

“When the cops came to his house he didn’t try to lie,” said Brad Chapman, a deputy public defender. “He didn’t try to do anything. He said, `Here I am. I’m guilty.”’