Transient Gets 15 Years for Attack on Woman, 84 : Port Hueneme: John P. Duggan had been convicted of attempted murder, assault, burglary, auto theft and attempted rape.

A transient who savagely beat an 84-year-old Port Hueneme grandmother received a 15-year prison sentence Friday, the maximum term allowed for what Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch called “the catastrophic waste of a person’s quality of life.”

Storch said he wished that the law permitted an even harsher sentence for 34-year-old John P. Duggan.

“I think that Mr. Duggan deserves every minute of it,” Storch said. “If I could find some additional time I’d give it to him, but I can’t.”

Last month, Storch tried Duggan, who had waived his right to a jury trial, and convicted him of attempted murder, assault, burglary, auto theft and attempted rape.

During the trial, Alan Busher, the victim’s grandson, testified that he awoke on Oct. 23 after hearing noises coming from his grandmother’s bedroom. Busher had invited Duggan to stay at the home temporarily.

There, Busher testified, he found a pool of blood on her bed and his grandmother on the floor, with Duggan naked and poised over her bloodied body.

After the two men struggled briefly, Duggan dove headfirst through a glass window in the living room, Busher testified. Duggan then ran about a block, entered a house and stole clothing, credit cards and the keys to a car that he drove to Los Angeles and sold for $20, according to other testimony.

He was arrested three weeks later.

Defense attorney William Maxwell had argued at the trial that Busher, not Duggan, assaulted the woman in a rage because he couldn’t get more money for cocaine.

Maxwell said Friday that Duggan had no history of violent crime and that the sentence for breaking into the second home should run consecutively with the sentence for attempted murder because they were part of the same crime.

However, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lela Henke-Dobroth argued that those crimes were separate, and that his attempt to kill the woman was separate from the attempted rape.

“In no way did he have to even come close to doing this kind of thing to this woman to have sex with her,” Henke-Dobroth said.

The attack left the woman bedridden in a convalescent home, suffering severe emotional and physical scars, Henke-Dobroth said.

The victim’s daughter also pleaded for the maximum penalty for Duggan.

Audrey Busher said she also blames her son for letting Duggan into the house to spend the night in the first place. “If not for this negligence, my mother would not have been hurt.

“I hope that justice will be served in this case,” Audrey Busher concluded. “My mother--it’s taken any meaning out of life for her, and it hurts me so very deeply. . . . It’s an unspeakable thing that’s happened to my mother.”

Storch then passed sentence, adding, “This is probably the most egregious case I’ve ever seen where somebody survived.”

He ordered Duggan to be transferred immediately to the California Institute for Men at Wasco.

With time off for good behavior, Duggan could be paroled within seven years and 10 months, Henke-Dobroth said.