Man Admits Attacking Woman and Daughter : Crime: The two-day spree of kidnaping and violence began in Port Hueneme and ended at a Las Vegas car dealership.

A Port Hueneme man charged with kidnaping, battering and sexually assaulting a woman and her 7-year-old daughter pleaded guilty Thursday to avoid risking a stiffer prison sentence and dragging the victims through a trial, his attorney said.

Justo Dungca, 34, admitted his role in the rampage of July 19 and 20 because he feared being sentenced to more than the 30 years he now faces and because he wanted to spare the victims from testifying, Deputy Public Defender William Perryman said.

Dungca admitted prosecutors’ allegations that he sexually assaulted the mother and child, bundled them into a car to drive them to Orange County, then drove the girl to Las Vegas after her mother escaped. When Las Vegas police finally closed in, he banged the girl’s head on the floor of a car dealership.

Dungca went on the spree of violence because “he became very, very emotionally distraught over the loss of his girlfriend and somehow or other felt that in some way the victims were partly responsible for that,” Perryman said Thursday after Dungca’s plea.

But the victims apparently played no role in the breakup of Dungca and his girlfriend two weeks before the incident, Perryman said. Dungca has no known prior criminal record and never showed signs of instability, Perryman said. “At that time, his emotional state was such that he wasn’t viewing things in the proper perspective and he just kind of went off,” he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. said there were indications that Dungca drove the mother and child to Orange County because he wanted to see his former girlfriend, but there was no explanation for the violence, O’Neill said.

Dungca was captured July 20 after he tried to trade in the mother’s 1986 Toyota Camry for a Mustang and $1,000 cash at a Las Vegas car dealership, O’Neill said. When the car dealers noticed that his name was not on the Toyota’s title, they called the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The DMV contacted police when an all-points bulletin about the kidnapings appeared in their computers, O’Neill said.

As police closed in, Dungca laced his fingers in the girl’s hair and banged her head on the floor several times before they could stop him, authorities said.

Dungca appeared late Thursday afternoon before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kenneth R. Yegan after negotiating his plea for at least two weeks with his attorney and O’Neill.

In exchange for the promise that he would receive a 30-year sentence and be eligible for parole by the year 2005, Dungca admitted to two counts of kidnaping and one count each of committing a forcible lewd act on a child, sexual battery by restraint and false imprisonment of a hostage.

Prosecutors also agreed to drop two counts of sexual battery in connection with assaults on the mother, one count of child molestation and one count of attempted murder. And Clark County, Nev., police have agreed not to prosecute Dungca with the understanding that he would plead guilty in Ventura County, O’Neill said.

Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 21.