VENTURA : New Charges Filed in Kidnaping Case

The Ventura County district attorney’s office filed eight new charges Tuesday against an unemployed Port Hueneme man accused of kidnaping and assault, including two offenses that could send him to jail for life.

A Port Hueneme police sergeant and a district attorney’s investigator took custody of Justo Dungca in Las Vegas on Tuesday afternoon and drove him to Port Hueneme police headquarters for booking.

Dungca, 34, is accused of tying up his housemate and her daughter July 19 in a bedroom of the residence they shared and sexually assaulting the mother. Authorities contend he later forced the pair into the woman’s car and drove to Anaheim, where the woman escaped without her child during a stop at a gas station.

Las Vegas police apprehended Dungca the next day when he allegedly tried to sell the woman’s car to an auto dealer. As police closed in, he allegedly took the girl in a stranglehold and banged her head on the floor. She was treated at a local hospital and released.

Dungca, who was being held in Las Vegas in default of $1-million bail, initially faced five charges carrying a maximum sentence of 28 years.

The district attorney’s office Tuesday substituted charges of kidnaping for robbery and kidnaping for extortion in place of a lesser kidnaping offense. The more serious charges carry a life sentence with possible parole after seven years.