Carlos Dominguez murder trial begins in 2023 stabbings that terrorized Davis
Trial begins Monday for Carlos Reales Dominguez, the former UC Davis student held on murder and attempted murder charges in the deadly stabbing spree that terrorized the college town two years ago this week.
Over an estimated 10-week trial, a Yolo Superior Court jury will determine whether Dominguez was sane during the days-long rampage and decide whether he is guilty or innocent of crimes that still reverberate through Davis. Yolo County District Attorney’s prosecutors decided not to pursue the death penalty in the slayings.
Dominguez has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to killing two people and grievously wounding a third over the space of five days in April and May 2023. David Henry Breaux, 50, was the first victim. Breaux was known to many in Davis as the “compassion guy,” for his kind and generous nature. He was found dead with multiple stab wounds April 27, 2023, in the city’s Central Park.
Karim Abou Najm, the 20-year-old son of a university professor who was weeks away from graduating from UC Davis, was killed on the night of April 29 when he was attacked as he walked through Sycamore Park.
A third woman, Kimberlee Guillory, then 64, was nearly killed May 1, 2023, when she was stabbed repeatedly through the tent where she slept near Second and L streets.
Days of testimony at Dominguez’s 2023 competency trial, months after the knife rampage, told of a young man in the grips of mental decline. Roommates and a former girlfriend were among those who took the stand to say Dominguez heard voices, stopped talking to his roommates and stared at the walls before the violent attacks.
One expert testified that Dominguez was a “textbook example of schizophrenia.” In Yolo County custody, he refused meals for days at a time. In the courtroom, a stringy mop of hair occluded his face as he sat motionless beside defense counsel and Yolo County Deputy Public Defender Daniel Hutchinson.
Superior Court Judge Samuel McAdam ultimately ordered Dominguez to a state hospital to restore competency and fitness for trial.
Dominguez spent months that year at Atascadero State Hospital to regain the ability to participate in his own defense before McAdam deemed him fit for trial in January 2024.
But the stacks of discovery gleaned from the three crimes and the months Dominguez was housed in state’s hospital custody scuttled any possibility of a trial in 2024, McAdam told counsel in June.
“This case has a lot of moving parts,” McAdam said last June. “It’s a complex case.”
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