Pregnant Woman Shot in Head; Husband Is Sought : Crime: Police say the couple were having a child-custody dispute. The victim was reported in stable condition at Hoag Hospital.

A pregnant Westminster woman was hospitalized Tuesday morning after her estranged husband confronted her outside her doctor’s office and shot her in the head as she tried to flee, police said.

Janet C. Totten, who is five months’ pregnant, was airlifted to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, where she was in stable condition with a bullet wound to the left side of her head, Police Lt. Ed McErlain said. Hospital officials would not comment on the case, but McErlain said the fetus was in no danger.

McErlain said Totten, 29, told doctors and detectives that her husband, Anthony L. Totten, had attacked her. “We have teams of investigators out looking for him,” McErlain said. “We haven’t been able to locate him.”

McErlain said that Janet Totten had just completed a checkup with her gynecologist and was driving out of the parking lot of the Kaiser Permanente medical building on Beach Boulevard when she noticed Anthony Totten walking up to her car. He was holding a .22-caliber, bolt-action rifle, McErlain said.

“He brandished the rifle at her, at which time she got out (of the car) and ran toward the building.”

But she only got as far as a sidewalk in front of the medical building when she was hit by gunfire, McErlain said. It was not determined how many shots were fired.

As she fell to the ground, bleeding from her left ear, her assailant ran off, pitching the rifle into a dumpster and fleeing toward a nearby apartment complex.

McErlain said that as doctors from the private medical center rushed outside to treat the victim, police arrived. Aided by witnesses, they then tracked the assailant to the apartment complex, but were unable to find him.

Police later confiscated a rifle believed used in the shooting and a 1990 white and blue Ford Ranger that was registered to Anthony Totten. The truck, McErlain said, had been left in the medical building’s rear parking lot.

The Tottens reportedly have been embroiled in a dispute over custody of their two children, McErlain said.

Court records show that the Tottens separated in February, with Anthony Totten filing for divorce on Oct. 25. He is seeking joint custody of the couple’s 4-year old daughter and year-old son.

Since the separation, Janet Totten has been living with her children at her mother’s Tahoe Street home in Westminster, her family and neighbors said.

Throughout much of the day, curious outpatients arriving at the circular office building stopped briefly to watch police dust the glass front doors for fingerprints, clean up the bloody gauze pads left by doctors and search the dumpster for clues.

Dr. Edward Zapata, a family practice physician for the health maintenance organization, said he was in his office when he heard “a lot of commotion” and an announcement on the public address system that a woman had been shot outside the building.

“They said that they needed a doctor out front,” said Zapata.

Zapata said that a few seconds after the first announcement, he heard another announcement that a man with a rifle was still outside.

“I came around the back,” Zapata said, “but I didn’t see him. I jumped up on top of the dumpster (located at the side of the building), and saw the rifle.”

He then went to the front of the building, where he saw Janet Totten being treated by several other physicians.

“I asked her who it was (who attacked her),” Zapata said. “She said, ‘Anthony.’ ”

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau and correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this report.