Man pleads guilty in attacks against two female victims

DA says 42-year-old Pittsburg resident will serve 18 years in prison

MARTINEZ >> A Pittsburg man’s no- contest plea Friday to charges of attempted murder and carjacking after separate attacks on two female victims means he will spend 18 years in state prison, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office said.

In a statement Monday, the district attorney’s office described the July attacks by 42-year- old Gilberto Villegas in graphic, direct language, noting that Villegas confessed to causing great bodily injury and having a prior violent felony.

On July 25, Villegas pulled his car up beside a woman at her work parking lot and demanded her keys after she got out. When she fled the car, Villegas forced her back, but she managed to throw her keys away. He then used his own keys to stab her in the neck multiple times, but stopped and fled in his own car after a witness approached and yelled at him to stop.

A day later, a different woman was sitting in her car parked at work on her lunch break when Villegas approached and opened her door. After managing to strangle her until she lost consciousness, he pushed her out of the car, started it and tried to run her over, but the woman’s co-workers stopped him and he drove away in her car.

A criminal complaint against Villegas listed his 2015 conviction for second- degree robbery with unlawful taking of a vehicle and use of a weapon after an Antioch gas station arrest.

Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorney Chris Sansoe prosecuted the case, investigated by Antioch and Pittsburg police.