Parties and video games: Davis stabbing suspect, roommates seemed like typical college kids

The house on Hawthorn Lane in Davis could be in any college town in America.

A weathered black couch sits on the front porch. A broken flat-screen television and an old pool table lay discarded in the side yard. An old car is parked out front.

Neighbors said that suspected Davis serial killer Carlos Reales Dominguez appeared to share the home with three or four roommates. There were never signs of serious trouble coming from the house, just typical college student behavior.

“They just come and go,” said Richard Houck, 81, who has lived next door to the home where Dominguez lived for roughly 30 years. “They had a couple of loud parties once in a while. It was actually more refreshing than anything else to have the kids around.”

One of the residents of the home played video games at all hours, the lights of their television screen glowing into the Houck’s bedroom. Houck called the city once because the residents left their cars parked in front of his home for weeks. The cars were moved soon after.

“It was pretty minor,” he said. “It wasn’t even a problem.”

Many of the homes on the street less than a half-mile from the University of California, Davis, campus are rented by students, neighbors said. Some long-time homeowners have moved away, turning their houses into rentals.

That was the case with Dominguez’s rental. It was owned by a Davis couple who settled in the city in 1956 — records showed and family members told The Sacramento Bee that the wife passed away on April 10 at the age of 95; the husband, a professor at UC Davis’s veterinary school for 27 years, died in 2003.

Like most rentals, it was managed by an outside agency.

Quiet street, no one home

Dominguez was a student at UC Davis until April 25 when he was “separated for academic reasons,” the school said.

No one answered the door at the home where Dominguez lived Friday morning. The street was quiet; a lawn care company tended to the grass down the street and students rode bicycles past the home on their way to class. Curious onlookers would slow down their cars every few minutes to gaze at the home.

The street was a chaotic scene Thursday, when investigators blocked off Hawthorn Lane and searched Dominguez’s home for hours. Around 2 p.m., Davis police announced they had arrested Dominguez on suspicion of stabbing three people over the past week, killing two. Davis police Chief Darren Pytel said the wave of attacks met the definition of a serial killer.

Dominguez was detained Wednesday after 15 separate callers phoned police saying a man matching the description of the person responsible for the stabbings was walking one block from Sycamore Park, site of the stabbing death of UC Davis senior Karim Abou Najm on April 29.

Dominguez is also suspected of stabbing and killing 50-year-old David Henry Breaux in downtown’s Central Park on April 27. Breaux was a beloved figure in Davis, known for asking people for their thoughts on the definition of compassion.

A third victim, Kimberlee Guillory, was stabbed multiple times through her tent in a homeless encampment at Second and L streets late Monday. She is recovering in a hospital.

This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 1:16 PM.