Kidnapping

and nobody believed her,” the police report states. The suspect’s sister told police the former couple previously had lived together and acknowledged the pair had been involved in “several domestic violence incidents.”

According to accounts given to police from both the victim and suspect, Magana was with their toddler daughter and staying with his mother in Ventura County when he and the child traveled by train Sunday to San Jose. The woman picked them up from the train station around 8:45 p.m. and they had dinner at a nearby restaurant.

When they got to her apartment on South 11th Street, Magana told detectives he was supposed to leave the child with the woman and head out, but that she let him stay on her couch because he had nowhere else to go. At one point, Magana said, he grabbed a 6-inch kitchen knife he spotted in the sink “and began to have bad thoughts,” according to the police report.

The two were in a heated discussion about their failed relationship and the woman’s new boyfriend, Magana said, telling detectives that “while her back was turned to him he stated he wanted her to feel what it feels like to be stabbed in the back like she was doing to him.”

Magana then stabbed and choked her, both the suspect and victim told police. According to the police report, Magana said he left his badly injured exgirlfriend

on the floor of the apartment while he went to shower, at which point the victim climbed out of a window.

Officers, responding to reports of a woman screaming for help, found the victim, barely breathing, lying in a nearby driveway, police said. As she struggled to stay conscious, the victim told the officers that “she last saw her 2-yearold daughter at her residence, crying and covered in blood,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

She also reportedly said she feared her child had been injured.

Though she initially was described as having lifethreatening injuries, the woman now is listed in stable condition, Officer Gina Tepoorten said Wednesday.

Magana drove off in the victim’s 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe SUV, according to police, who soon after asked the California Highway Patrol to issue an Amber Alert alerting motorists across the state. According to the police report, Magana told detectives that he did not leave the San Jose area immediately and watched as police cars and an ambulance raced by him to the victims’ apartment.

Magana also told police that he initially thought about traveling north, but decided to head south, eventually ending up in San Luis Obispo County. He said he fell asleep at a Shell gas station in Cambria and woke around 5 a.m. Monday. At some point after, he told police, he left the keys — and his daughter — inside the SUV.

By then, several people at the gas station recognized Magana and the

SUV from the Amber Alert. Some patrons boxed in the vehicle with their own cars, and Magana was described as trying to use a rock to smash the SUV’s window.

Cellphone video taken by a station employee captured Magana loudly denying that he was the subject of the Amber Alert. The station manager then reportedly put Magana in a chokehold, and other people helped keep him in place until state park rangers — the first law enforcement officers to arrive at the station — took Magana into custody.

The San Jose police report includes a summary of statements that Magana made “spontaneously” while riding in a police vehicle back to the Bay Area and that apparently were recorded by a detective’s body camera.

Magana reportedly said he tried to support his child as a stay-at-home dad but struggled to find work because he could not afford to replace his lost green card. He talked about the contentious relationship he had with the victim and ultimately voiced regret about the attack.

“He asked us if she was still alive,” the summary reads. “He said he knew he was not going to get away with what he did. There was too much evidence.”

Also while in the police car, a detective asked Magana if he thought he and the woman “were still a couple.” The detective later noted the suspect’s response: “He said I don’t think they are together now after this.”