A 21-year-old who was a UC Davis student until last week was formally charged Friday with two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder after a series of stabbings terrorized the small city, officials said. Carlos Dominguez was arrested by the Davis Police Department on Thursday and is accused of two fatal stabbings and a third that critically injured one person.
The charging papers filed by Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig’s office allege that the two deaths and third attack were “willful, deliberate and premeditated.”
The charges include enhancements for “great violence, great bodily harm, threat of great bodily harm, or other acts disclosing a high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness.” Another enhancement alleges Dominguez committed multiple murders; prosecutors could use this to make a case for life in prison without parole or the death penalty (though California currently has a moratorium on the death penalty) though this decision will be made later, the DA’s office said in a statement.
The filing was released ahead of Dominguez’s arraignment scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday.
The three stabbings occurred across less than a week’s time and rattled Davis, a college town of about 70,000 people about 15 miles west of Sacramento. Some students left the UC Davis campus out of fear.
The first stabbing occurred April 26 or 27 in the city’s Central Park, where David Breaux, 50, known as the “Compassion Guy,” was found dead with multiple stab wounds hunched over on a bench the morning of April 27, police said.
“He had been stabbed many times,” Darren Pytel, chief of the Davis Police Department, said in a press conference. “And it was apparent that it was a particularly brazen and brutal attack. We launched an investigation, collected a lot of physical evidence and immediately started looking for who may be responsible. The problem with this one is there was no eyewitnesses.”
Two days later, Karim Abou Najm, 20, was walking in Sycamore Park when he was stabbed to death early in the morning of April 29, according to police. “A witness had seen the last part of the attack,” Pytel said, “had a short interaction with the suspect, who took off going westbound out of the park. We immediately started a search, but we weren’t able to locate the suspect that night.”
On May 1, Kimberlee Guillory was attacked multiple times with a knife while she was inside a tent where she had been living near Second and L streets, police said. “She underwent surgery and she is recovering,” Pytel said.
Dominguez was detained near Sycamore Park at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, after more than a dozen people called the police department, reporting that they had seen a young man who matched witnesses’ description of a suspect wandering around the park, Pytel said. After hours of questioning, he was booked at Yolo County Jail. Pytel said that evidence indicates all three stabbings are linked and committed by the same person.
Dominguez started at UC Davis in fall 2020 and was enrolled as a biology major until April 25, when he was kicked out of the school for “academic reasons,” the university said in a statement.
“We are partnering with law enforcement to provide access to any and all information as part of the investigation,” the university said in a statement issued just before 3 p.m. Thursday. “We are providing support to any students who may have interacted with him. As we learn more and are able to provide updates that do not interfere with the ongoing investigation, we will do so.”
