UC Davis student slain in stabbings remembered: ‘A brilliant mind and a kind soul’
Nadine Yehya remembers her son, Karim Abou Najm, as a generous soul who was there for many fellow students at University of California, Davis, in their time of need.
“I don’t want you to remember Karim as the Davis victim,” she told an audience Friday afternoon at a campus memorial service. “Remember Karim as the bright, brilliant generous soul that he is and will always be.”
Several hundred people gathered for a celebration of life at the UC Davis International Center to remember Abou Najm and honor his legacy of mentorship and academic achievement.
He was 20 years old when he was attacked while riding his bicycle home through Sycamore Park. Police said he was repeatedly stabbed and had died at the scene.
Abou Najm was among the three victims in Davis who were brutally stabbed by an assailant over a span of five days. David Henry Breaux, 50, a local fixture known as the Compassion Guy, was the first victim and was killed in a similar attack. A third victim, Kimberlee Guillory, was inside her tent at a homeless encampment when an assailant stabbed her repeatedly. She survived.
A week after the first stabbing, the Davis Police Department announced the arrest of 21-year-old Carlos Reales Dominguez, who had been a UC Davis student until April 25 when he was “separated for academic reasons.” Breaux’s attack happened two days later.
Hours before Friday’s memorial, Reales Dominguez was formally charged with two counts of murder and one of attempted murder in connection with the stabbings. Authorities have not said what they believe was the motive behind the attacks, and they’re trying to determine whether Reales Dominguez was suffering from mental illness.
Abou Najm’s mother said her son would often ask her why so many students struggled with psychological and mental illness? He also couldn’t understand why those students came to him for advice and comfort. It’s because her son was a great listener, and he knew what to say to make them feel better.
“Mental health is a national crisis, and we cannot turn our backs,” Yehya told the mourners. “I need to know what turns people into monsters. One day, they are just normal. And the other, they are source of grave danger. We need better research and interventions to prevent such horrific attacks, irrespective of the weapon used.”
The mother urged everyone to speak up when they notice someone else is struggling with mental health problems; direct them to helpful resources. She warned that ignoring the problem won’t work.
‘Our pain is immense’
Abou Najm was born in Lebanon. He attended International College in Beirut before moving to the United States in 2018. He graduated from Davis High School in 2020 and was just six weeks from his UCD graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He worked on campus at Lee M. Miller’s Speech Neuroengineering and Cybernetics Laboratory.
Miller said he served as Abou Najm’s mentor, research colleague and business partner. Miller said one of the lessons he learned from him was that impatience is a virtue when you’re pursuing something important. Every goal he cared about, he wanted it to happen now.
“Karim moved fast. So fast, the rest of us could barely keep up with him,” Miller said the memorial service. “It seemed that he defied time itself, accomplishing more in a day than many of us do in a week.”
He already had two jobs lined up to start his career after college, including a startup company where he would work on developing technology for speech recognition for augmented reality glasses to display subtitles for those who are deaf or hearing impaired.
His father, Majdi Abou Najm, an associate professor of soil biophysics at UC Davis, told the audience Friday that his family would forever be grateful to the extended Davis community for sharing their support int the days after his son’s slaying.
“Our pain is immense, but today is not the time to share it,” the father said. “Today, we celebrate the life of an exceptional human being, Karim. A brilliant mind and a kind soul.”
Memorial scholarship established
In an interview with The Sacramento Bee two days after his death, the grieving father spoke about his son’s mentorship to fellow students and the hopes he had for his future.
“He had lots of dreams,” he said. “He had a startup idea in mind. He wanted to connect scientists, students and academics to businesses and industry, and create some sort of a platform that connects us with each other.”
Several hours before he was attacked in the park, Abou Najm had been in a celebratory mood. His father said his son had been on campus earlier that Saturday presenting his research project on speech recognition technology. The young man even shared his joy on his LinkedIn page.
“Though it is just one of the research projects I’ve worked on as a student here, and won’t be my last publication with Lee M. Miller, it is the one closest to my heart,” the young Abou Najm wrote in the LinkedIn post. “My experiences working on devices that uplift the human experience and connect people through technology plays a major part in my passion for XRAI Glass, and my love of software.”
His father said Karim had been with friends before he decided to head home that night through a park trail he and his son used all the time.
“It’s a park that many people go to and it’s supposed to be a safe place,” he said on Monday. “I think the entire community is shaken and I think we need to stand up together as a community, work together to make Davis a safer place for all of us.”
UC Davis has established a memorial fund in his honor, titled the Karim Majdi Abou Najm Memorial Undergraduate Student Research Award, which is intended to provide stipends to undergraduate students involved in research.
“Davis as a city or as a university, the entire community, lost a beautiful individual,” his father told The Bee. “Karim will be missed as a friend, as a mentor, as a positive element in this place. And I hope, with his departure, his memory will stay and will inspire others to follow his path.”
