2 Adults, Child Hurt in Attack : Crime: A mother is nearly beaten to death; her male friend is seriously injured, and the woman’s daughter is bludgeoned but flees for help.

A woman was nearly beaten to death and a male friend was seriously injured early Tuesday morning by an assailant who also attacked the woman’s 12-year-old daughter, who was awakened by her mother’s screams.

The daughter, Lolita Mariscal, managed to flee to a neighbor’s home to summon help, Orange County sheriff’s investigators said.

“She heard her mother screaming for help,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson. “She got up to see what was going on and got hit on the back of the head. That’s when she ran out and went to a neighbor’s house and called 911.”

Deputies were dispatched to the 9500 block of Chanticleer Road in an unincorporated area near Anaheim just before 1 a.m. They found Maria Navarro, 40, lying in a pool of blood in a bedroom and her friend, Jose Lopez, unconscious in the kitchen, Olson said.

Both had been beaten with a blunt instrument, and investigators were handling the case as attempted murder, Olson said.

Olson declined comment on a possible motive for the assaults or whether there were any suspects. However, he said he did not want to give the impression that “there is some mad man or woman out there beating up on people.”

“The biggest thing we want is to let people know that, based on the way our investigation is progressing, we don’t feel we have someone running amok in the neighborhood, beating up on people,” he said.

“We don’t have this thing all ironed out yet, but we don’t feel there is cause for alarm for other people in the area other than to ask them to take the normal precautions they should take every day,” he said.

Olson said he did not know if the family knew the assailant because investigators have not been able to question them.

Navarro was in critical condition following surgery for injuries to her head and body, a spokeswoman at Humana Hospital-Westminster said. Her daughter was in serious condition there, with a wound to the back of her head.

Lopez was listed in guarded condition with neck and head injuries at UCI Medical Center in Orange, hospital spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.