La Habra man sent to prison for stalking and harassing women

WESTMINSTER — A 27-year-old La Habra man has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison for stalking and harassing several young women, some of whom he met while a Fullerton College student.

Dominic Luis Magdaleno was convicted Oct. 30 of two counts each of criminal threats and stalking and one count of dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, all felonies, along with two counts of annoying phone calls and one count of repeated annoying phone calls, all misdemeanors.

Jurors deadlocked on two counts of felony stalking, so those charges were dismissed.

On Friday, Orange County Superior Court Lance Jensen also ordered Magdaleno to register for the rest of his life as a sex offender.

“The evidence clearly demonstrated that the defendant was a relentless pursuer of the young women in this case, using multiple vehicles, including, but not limited to, sexually graphic content,” Jensen said, according to court records.

“The defendant produced a tsunami of emails, social media posts and messages and text messages and phone calls for multiple years, all of which carried sexual themes for his own personal satisfaction,” Jensen added.

Magdaleno has not exhibited any signs of halting the “sexual harassment of young women,” so compelling him to register as a sex offender will allow police the authority to monitor his behavior, Jensen said.

Magdaleno was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison. He was given credit for 1,474 days served in jail awaiting trial.

Deputy District Attorney Ray Gennawey characterized Magdaleno as a “sexual stalker” who harassed seven women.

“Since 2014 he has preyed on young girls, and sent them thousands and thousands of unsolicited messages,” Gennawey wrote in a court filing. “He watched them on campus and used social media to torment them. He threatened to follow them home, rape them and kill them. He threatened them with images of guns and lynching.”

Magdaleno mined personal information from social media to “use it against” his victims, Gennawey said.

“He was relentless in his pursuit, and placed these young women in fear for their lives,” Gennawey said.

The stalking started when he was paired up with a classmate at Fullerton College on a project, Gennawey said. Their professor made the students exchange contact information, which the defendant used to stalk the classmate, Gennawey said.

“And then he found more young girls on social media to victimize,” Gennawey said. “When they blocked his messages, he created new accounts from which to contact them. He only ceased stalking them on social media when he was incarcerated, and, even then, he continued to send handwritten letters from jail.”

The women ranged in age from 18 to 23, Gennawey said.