Survivor of Davis stabbing spree testifies at Carlos Dominguez trial about attack
Kimberlee Guillory initially believed she was being punched after someone slashed through her tent and attacked her with a blade.
“I just didn’t think someone was stabbing me. The first time took my breath away. Then it continued,” Guillory said from the witness stand Wednesday afternoon at Carlos Reales Dominguez’s murder trial in Woodland.
Guillory, who was 64 at the time and newly homeless in Davis, had been sleeping in a friend’s tent beside a PG&E substation on L Street. On May 1, 2023, she became the third and final victim in a weeklong stabbing spree that killed two others and left Davis on edge.
Dominguez has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to the stabbings two years ago that killed David Breaux, 50, and Karim Abou Najm, 20, as well as the near-fatal attack on Guillory. The trial, now in the guilt phase, is expected to last up to 10 weeks.
Earlier Wednesday, jurors heard testimony from Dr. Matt Massie, the Davis physician who tried to save Najm after the college student was stabbed along a Sycamore Park bike path.
Massie testified that he chased the attacker, who briefly turned to him and said, “What do you want, man? Leave me alone.” The man’s voice, Massie said, sounded like “a scared young man,” not the monster he expected.
Massie reached Najm, but his wounds were “devastating,” and efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
Prosecutors allege Dominguez fled the park and, three days later, attacked Guillory.
Word of the knife killings had made its way through the camps, campers who shared the strip of land along Davis’ Second Street with Guillory testified. Guillory said she and a group of four others stayed close that night. She stayed awake browsing on a phone, the phone’s glow illuminating the tent, as she leaned against its back wall.
“I thought I was being punched really hard in the back — at first. After a couple seconds, it hurt. He was continuing to stab me. I don’t know who he was or why he was doing it,” Guillory, now 66 and living in West Sacramento, said. “I stood up after he was gone and I saw blood start to gush out of me. I dialed my daughter’s number and said, ‘I’ve just been stabbed. She said, ‘Oh, my God,’ and that’s when the ambulance came. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital.”
She spent several days in critical condition and testified that two campmates fought with her attacker, whom she later identified in the courtroom as Dominguez. “I did actually see his face while they were wrestling. He looked at me while I was lying on the floor.”
Yolo County District Attorney’s prosecutors devoted Wednesday to testimony detailing the slayings of Breaux and Najm days apart in Davis’ Central and Sycamore parks; before closing the day with Guillory’s testimony.
Dominguez, a former UC Davis student, was arrested three days late on May 4. Authorities say he purchased the tactical knife used in the stabbings months earlier. He was declared competent to stand trial in January after months at a state hospital.
If convicted, he faces life in prison. Prosecutors decided months before the trial that they would not seek the death penalty.
Testimony in the first phase continues through the week at Yolo Superior Court.
This story was originally published May 7, 2025 at 5:48 PM.
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