Recent student arrested in three stabbings in California Town

DAVIS, Calif. — A 21-year-old man, who was a student at the University of California, Davis until last week, has been arrested in connection with a harrowing string of three stabbings in the college town, police announced Thursday.

The man, Carlos Dominguez of Davis, was apprehended on suspicion of murder after residents called police on Wednesday with more than a dozen reports that they had seen a frail, young man matching the suspect’s description wandering near the park where one of the attacks took place, police said.

Mr Dominguez was carrying “a hunting-style knife” when he was apprehended on Wednesday, police said. He was initially held on gun charges before being arrested on Thursday afternoon for two murders and one attempted murder.

The announcement, which came just hours after a memorial service for one of the stabbing victims, was met with relief in the city of about 70,000 west of Sacramento. The three stabbings over five days had shocked residents of Davis, where the last reported murder occurred in 2019.

“A killer is off the streets and our families will sleep better tonight,” said Will Arnold, the mayor. “Now the real work begins to heal as a community, take back our shared spaces and move forward as one.”

On the street where police said Mr. Dominguez shared a house with several roommates, neighbors said they were still processing news that they lived near a young man accused of murdering fellow residents. They said Mr. Dominguez and his roommates regularly hosted parties and exercised in the garage with the door open, but otherwise did not interact much with the neighborhood, where most of the residents are not students.

“I’m still reeling,” said Richard Houck, 82, whose home was behind police tape for most of the day as officers executed a search warrant at Mr Dominguez’s address, a rental that Mr Houck said had been busy. year by a series of students.

“It can happen anywhere,” he said in an interview after the arrest. “It can happen next to you, right?”

Mr. Dominguez, also known as Carlos Reales Dominguez, was a third-year biological sciences student at UC Davis who was divorced on April 25 for academic reasons. said the university.

It’s unclear if Mr. Dominguez knew any of the three victims, said Darren Pytel, the city’s police chief.

The first was David Henry Breaux, 50, a Stanford University graduate who slept outside and was known to locals for a years-long project collecting and compiling definitions of compassion. He was found dead at about 11:20 a.m. on April 27 in a park where he routinely spoke to residents at the city’s farmer’s market. Popularly known as “the Compassion Guy,” Mr Breaux had been stabbed “many, many times,” Chief Pytel said at a city council meeting this week.

Two days after that initial attack, Karim Abou Najm, 20, a student majoring in computer science at UC Davis, was killed on a bike path after an altercation in a neighborhood park at 9:14 p.m. Saturday. A witness who lives near the trail told police he overheard a disturbance and rushed to the crime scene to find the student bleeding from multiple stab wounds. He described seeing a young man with curly hair trying to get away on the victim’s bicycle.

As authorities accelerated DNA analysis of evidence found at the two crime scenes, a woman in a homeless camp east of the city center reported a third attack late Monday, saying she was repeatedly forced through the wall. from her tent.

The woman, Kimberlee Guillory, survived, police said, adding that she remained hospitalized and was alert and improving. The victim and nearby witnesses described the attacker as a curly-haired young man in dark clothing lurking near the encampment.

“We believe all three are connected, and we have evidence and information that they are,” Chief Pytel said.

It was unclear Thursday whether Mr. Dominguez had any representation. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Yolo County Superior Court on Friday.

According to a LinkedIn profile, he graduated from an Oakland high school in 2020 after interning for two years at local mentoring programs for students interested in a career in medicine. One program, the Oakland Health Pathways Partnership, was discussed an interview with him on her website under a shortened version of his name in which he said he wanted to be a doctor one day.

“I went into healthcare to help my grandmother — she has type 2 diabetes,” Mr. Dominguez, then a student at Castlemont High School, says in the interview. “People might think it’s boring or scary when you’re a surgeon and you see all that blood, but saving someone’s life makes you feel good about yourself.”

Before the arrest, fear was mounting in the leafy cul-de-sacs, Little League fields and residence halls of Davis, a town where locals normally feel safe enough each summer to keep their windows open to catch the “Delta breeze.” that blows out of San Francisco. Francisco Bay. This week, local businesses closed early, college events were canceled and evening classes were shifted to distance learning.

Davis’s small police force established a tip line, shifted to longer shifts, and enlisted the help of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to help process hundreds of reports.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, calls came in about someone who matched the description of the suspect. Carter Carlson, 23, a member of staff at the primary school adjoining the park where Mr Najm died, said he was placing flowers at a makeshift memorial along the cycle path when he saw a lone figure, with a confused appearance, on the nearby playground acting weird. He called the police.

“He was pacing back and forth on a children’s bridge between two playgrounds,” said Mr. Carlson.

He added that when another man entered the park, talking on his cell phone, the young man noticed and began to wander away, heading towards a local strip mall. Mr. Carlson got into his Honda Civic, he said, and followed him until he lost sight of him.

Soon after, he said, he saw several police cars and finally around 5 p.m. police officers led the man away.

Mr. Carlson, a native of Davis, credited not only the police, but the community itself for the arrest.

“Everyone is very shocked and everyone has taken this very hard,” he said, “but this community has really come together to support those who have been so sadly attacked.”

Jill Kuwan contributed reporting and Kitty Bennett contributed research.