Man Gets 30 Years in Rampage

In a rare detour from its policy against plea bargaining, the district attorney’s office approved a 30-year prison term Wednesday for a Port Hueneme man who agreed to plead guilty to abducting, raping and assaulting a woman and her 7-year-old daughter.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kenneth R. Yegan sentenced Justo Q. Dungca to 30 years in prison for the July 19-20 rampage after the prosecutor negotiated the plea bargain with Dungca’s attorney.

“These two people were victimized by Mr. Dungca in what can only be described as one of the most brutal, vicious, atrocious incidents I’ve ever seen in 20 years in this business,” Yegan said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. said his office allows plea bargaining only under special circumstances. In this case, prosecutors agreed to let Dungca plead guilty in exchange for a guaranteed sentence so the victims would not have to testify, O’Neill said.

Dungca, who has no prior criminal record, has admitted that his 24-hour crime spree began when he became distraught after his girlfriend left him.

He admitted that he sexually assaulted the mother and child in their residence, put the girl into a duffel bag and tried to stuff the mother into a suitcase with holes drilled in it for ventilation. He then forced the two into the woman’s car and drove them toward Orange County, where his former girlfriend lived.

When they reached Anaheim, the woman broke free at a gas station and alerted police, but Dungca drove on with the child to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas police converged on Dungca at an auto dealership, where clerks had notified police that the car Dungca was trying to trade in had been stolen.

As police closed in, authorities said, Dungca wrapped the girl’s hair around his hands and slammed her head against the floor, then choked her before he was captured by police. The child was treated at a local hospital and released.

Police found that the woman’s signature on the car’s title had been forged and that Dungca had an uncashed Internal Revenue Service refund check that had been taken from the woman several weeks earlier.

Dungca pleaded guilty Oct. 25 to two counts of kidnaping and one count each of committing a forcible lewd act on a child, sexual battery by restraint, false imprisonment of a hostage, grand theft and a special allegation of use of a knife.

O’Neill agreed to drop the remaining two counts of sexual battery in connection with the assault on the mother, one count of child molestation and one count of attempted murder. Also, Clark County, Nev., police have agreed not to prosecute Dungca in light of his guilty plea.

With time off for good behavior, Dungca could be released as early as 2005, Yegan said.