Yolo jury selection continues in Carlos Dominguez retrial in 2023 Davis stabbing spree
Jury selection continued Friday in Woodland ahead of Carlos Reales Dominguez’s second murder trial in the deadly Davis knife attacks that left two men dead, a woman grievously wounded and a city terrorized in 2023.
The trial is expected to begin as early as Tuesday in Yolo Superior Court. Dominguez remains held without bail.
Yolo County jurors failed to reach a verdict at trial last June forcing Yolo Superior Court Judge Samuel T. McAdam to declare a mistrial. The panel found the former UC Davis student not guilty of first-degree murder in the stabbing death of 50-year-old David Breaux and deadlocked on whether to convict or acquit Dominguez on a charge of second-degree murder in Breaux’s slaying in a case that focused on Dominguez’s mental state at the time of the serial stabbings.
Jurors at the first trial also deadlocked on charges of second-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of graduating UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm, 20, as well as the attempted murder of Kimberlee Guillory, then 64, who was stabbed repeatedly as she sheltered in a tent in downtown Davis. Guillory survived the attack and later testified at the first trial.
Both Breaux and Abou Najm were fatally attacked in late April 2023 in Davis city parks — Breaux on a park bench at the city’s Central Park and Abou Najm as he rode his bicycle through Davis’ Sycamore Park.
The attacks paralyzed Davis as authorities searched for a suspect before detaining and arresting a disheveled Dominguez in May, days after the first fatal attack.
Dominguez was later diagnosed with symptoms of schizophrenia while in Yolo County custody and was briefly transferred to a state hospital for treatment before his return to Woodland to face trial. Doctors, his roommates, a former girlfriend and family members testified to his declining mental state in the months before the stabbings.
Dominguez himself took the stand at the first trial, testifying to the “shadow figures” and voices that led him to attack Breaux, Abou Najm and Guillory during the space of a week in late April and early May 2023.
The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office is not pursuing the death penalty in the case. Yolo County prosecutors plan to argue at the new trial that the brutal knife attacks were brought on not by diagnosed schizophrenia, but by Dominguez’s heavy and prolonged use of cannabis.
Prosecutors at a pretrial hearing last November argued Dominguez bought and used what they described as “high THC value” cannabis — with levels of 10% THC or higher — for months and perhaps years before the violence.
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