Doctor who tried to save second victim in 2023 Davis stabbing rampage takes stand
As Davis physician Dr. Matt Massie chased the man who attacked Karim Abou Najm along a Sycamore Park bike trail, the man glanced back and called out as he fled the horrific scene before them.
“He said something like, ‘What do you want, man? Leave me alone.’ He sounded like a child,’” Massie testified Wednesday at Carlos Reales Dominguez’s murder trial in Woodland. “When you see something like that, you think it was done by a monster, but he sounded like a scared young man.” The voice briefly confused him and for a moment, Massie testified, he thought he was chasing the wrong man.
The man who Massie saw atop Najm and who prosecutors say was Dominguez fled into the darkness, leaving behind a dying Najm. Massie tried desperately to save the 20-year-old, he testified, but the young man’s wounds — “devastating,” Massie testified — were too great.
Dominguez is accused in the weeklong knife rampage in late April and May 2023 that killed Najm and David Breaux, 50, of Davis; and seriously wounded then-64-year-old Kimberlee Guillory, of Davis.
Massie had run the short distance from his home on the edge of Sycamore Park toward Najm’s screams for help on the bike trail and the bloody attack that took the 20-year-old’s life. His testimony Tuesday in Yolo Superior Court and again through much of the morning Wednesday focused on those chaotic moments outside his home on the night of April 29, 2023.
What Massie first thought was a bicycle accident was far more serious. Najm was still alive but gravely wounded, he testified.
“His eyes were open. He had a look of terror on his face,” Massie testified. Najm’s father, Majdi Abou Najm, seated in a front row of the gallery, bowed his head at the doctor’s words, absorbing the account of his son’s final moments. “I called 911 and said, ‘I need police here as soon as possible.”
Guillory was expected to testify Wednesday afternoon to her near-fatal May 1, 2023, attack at her tent on Second and L streets in Davis, before Yolo Superior Court Judge Samuel McAdam as the guilt phase of Dominguez’s trial continued.
Dominguez has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors allege that Dominguez, a former UC Davis student, bought the tactical knife used in the stabbings five months before the attacks, calling the spree “deliberate, willful and premeditated.”
The trial is structured in two phases: a guilt phase, now underway, followed by a sanity phase to determine whether Dominguez was legally sane at the time of the 2023 stabbings. Yolo County prosecutors opted not to seek the death penalty. Instead, Dominguez faces life in prison if convicted.
Dominguez’s case centers not only on the violence of the acts but also on his rapid mental health decline in the months prior. He spent nearly four months at Atascadero State Hospital before being deemed competent to stand trial in January 2024.
During a previous competency hearing, a court expert described him as a “textbook example of schizophrenia.” Roommates and an ex-girlfriend previously testified that he had withdrawn socially and exhibited disturbing behavior, including staring at walls and speaking to unseen figures.
His roommates and former significant other are expected to testify again during the trial, which could last as many as 10 weeks.
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 1:38 PM.
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