O.C. Woman Is Attacked in Her Home

A woman fought off two attackers in her Villa Park home Tuesday by shattering a coffee mug in the face of one of the men, authorities said.

The woman arrived at her house on Smoketree Circle about 9 a.m. with her 7-year-old daughter, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. They had just returned from taking her three other children to school, he said.

When she went inside the house from the attached garage, a man wearing a ski mask came out of the bathroom and started choking her from behind, Amormino said. A second man, also wearing a mask, punched her in the face several times, he said.

Both men fled after the woman hit the second suspect with a mug she had been holding, he said. The girl, who had not gone to school because she was sick, ran across the street and asked a neighbor to call 911.

The 38-year-old woman, who was not identified, was treated for severe facial injuries at Chapman Medical Center in Orange, Amormino said.

The attackers fled in a white pickup driven by another man, he said.

Amormino said it was unknown whether the woman and her daughter had interrupted a burglary.