By LYNSI BURTON, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

A 26-year-old man has been charged with armed robbery after a Safeway security officer was slashed in the arm during a diaper heist at the grocery chain's Covington store.

And apparently it wasn't the man's first attempt at pilfering diapers.

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King County Sheriff's deputies were called to the store on Southeast 272nd Street just before noon on Nov. 12, reports say. There, deputies found a loss-prevention officer bleeding from his upper left arm.

 The victim told authorities that he and another security guard watched while a man, later identified as Dale Gorden, walked into the store, picked up two boxes of Huggies valued at about $73, and left the building without paying, according to reports.

One of the security officers confronted the man outside the store, prompting the alleged thief to start running through the parking lot, where he was nearly hit by a car, witness and victim accounts say.

When the officer caught up to the thief, the suspect "turned on him and struck him in the arm," reports say.

The officer "immediately felt his arm feel different" and saw blood gushing from his arm, according to the Sheriff's Office. The thief ran away toward a nearby Jack in the Box.

A deputy found a man matching the thief's description -- who reportedly identified himself as Gorden -- near the Jack in the Box and detained him. The deputy found a black folding knife on the ground near Gorden, stained with blood and tissue, according to the detective's account.

Read the rest of the story here.