A man from Willows remains in critical condition from a stabbing at a Redding convenience store over the weekend. At 1:11AM Sunday morning police and medics were called to the AM/PM Store at Railroad Avenue and Buenaventura. 36-year-old Joseph Anthony Ortega was suffering from a stab wound to his throat. Witnesses said 3 people had fled on foot and police found them hiding in nearby bushes and ditches. 35-year-old Billy Wayne Goss, a homeless man, was hiding in a ditch under a bridge several hundred yards away. Ortega and Goss had never met before the encounter in the parking lot. Ortega and his adult son had come to Redding to pick up a friend and stopped at the Jack-in-the-Box for food. Somehow Ortega and his son started arguing with Goss and his two friends. That turned into a fight in front of the AM/PM, during which Goss allegedly stabbed Ortega in the throat. He was booked into jail for attempted murder. He maintains that the use of the knife was in self defense because he and his friends were being attacked, but police say surveillance footage tells a different story. Ortega is still in intensive care at Mercy Medical Center.