Suspect in Woman’s Stabbing Surrenders : Canyon Country: Assailant left his ex-girlfriend in critical condition, authorities say. A friend who witnessed the attack called for help.

A 27-year-old man suspected of repeatedly stabbing his ex-girlfriend Monday morning outside her Canyon Country apartment surrendered 12 hours later to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies after a tracking dog followed the man’s trail.

A sheriff’s spokesman said William Good of Santa Clarita is being held on suspicion of the attempted murder of Dorre Wagner-Dow, 33, at 4:30 a.m. as she was returning from her waitress job. Deputies said Good surprised the victim on her doorstep and that a quarrel about the break up of their former relationship preceded the attack.

Wagner-Dow, who was reported in critical but stable condition after undergoing surgery at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia, might not have survived had it not been for a friend who had driven her home from her job at a nearby coffee shop and witnessed the attack, witnesses and deputies said.

The friend, Lance Broderick, 24, tried to attract attention to the attack by sounding the horn of his car. He then dialed 911 on his car phone and briefly chased the suspect’s car. He also provided deputies with a description of Good and the license plate number of Good’s vehicle.

“If Lance hadn’t been here, I don’t know if we would have responded quickly enough,” said Christina Promisel, 23, who with her two children shared the apartment on Hidaway Street with Wagner-Dow and the victim’s three children. Wagner-Dow’s children, an 8-year-old daughter and two sons, ages 12 and 13, were visiting at the time of the attack with their father, from whom Dow-Wagner is divorced, Promisel said.

She said she was awakened by the car horn and by the victim’s screams. When she reached Dow-Wagner, she was bleeding from the neck and chest area and Promisel and another neighbor applied compresses to stanch the flow of blood.

Moments after the attack, the suspect fled on foot to his car, which was parked nearby, and drove toward his apartment on Stillmore Street about a mile away, authorities said.

Broderick chased the suspect but Good eluded him along Soledad Canyon Road, deputies said.

At the same time, deputies at the scene of the attack elicited the suspect’s name from the victim, Deputy Patrick Hunter said.

“We pieced all that information together and ascertained that he had driven to his apartment,” Hunter said. “The lights were on in his apartment, and the vehicle we believed to be his was in the carport, which led us to believe he was home.”

A Sheriff’s Department SWAT unit summoned from East Los Angeles, as well as other deputies, staked out Good’s apartment for about 3 1/2 hours and then fired two tear-gas grenades into the residence. When they entered, however, the unit was empty.

Authorities left the residential complex about 10 a.m. but by mid-afternoon they had gotten a tip that Good might be hiding nearby. They then called the department’s tracking dog unit and SWAT unit to an assembly point at Sierra Vista Junior High School, about a half block away from the complex.

Shortly before 4 p.m. they returned to the complex and began following Good’s trail with the help of the dogs. Soon after, they opened a vacant unit using a master key and found Good hiding in a back bedroom. Deputies said he did not resist arrest.

Promisel said Wagner-Dow and Good were introduced early this year “by a friend of a friend” and that “everything seemed so normal at first.”

Good later moved into Wagner-Dow’s apartment in Palmdale but in June she moved to Canyon Country with her children after the relationship began to cool. The couple still dated, though, even exchanging a kiss for photographs taken by Promisel as recently as September. But, Wagner-Dow later tried to make a clean break.

In November, Wagner-Dow began working at the Denny’s coffee shop in the Knoll Shopping Center on Soledad Canyon Road in Canyon Country. But Good did not accept that the relationship was over. A co-worker of Wagner-Dow said she was afraid that her ex-boyfriend was stalking her.

Soon thereafter Good applied for a waiter’s job at the coffee shop. But, according to her roommate, Wagner-Dow told him that if he worked there he could not interfere with her work, “so he backed out.”

“My God, he could have worked here!” coffee shop manager Ralph Dahl said. “I didn’t know he knew Dorre. He was neat, clean-cut, soft-spoken and wore immaculate casual clothes. “But then,” he shrugged, “who’s to know the fire going inside any person?”