Davis stabbing suspect pleads not guilty in Yolo court, is denied bail after deadly spree
Carlos Reales Dominguez was arraigned Friday afternoon in Yolo Superior Court.
The 21-year-old former UC Davis student, who police and prosecutors believe is responsible for the killings of two Davis men and the attempted murder of a third woman, was formally charged in the slayings that paralyzed the college town.
He entered not guilty pleas to all the charges.
The legal quest to what may have motivated Reales Dominguez to allegedly commit the brutal spree began inside Department 1 at the Woodland justice center.
In Judge Daniel Wolk’s courtroom, the young man accused of the terror that gripped Davis for days stood behind plexiglass, eyes fixed to the ground behind a stringy veil of black hair, wearing a protective vest, as the charges were read. He faces two counts of murder; one of attempted murder. The crimes, in the words of prosecutors, indicated cruelty, planning and sophistication.
A half-dozen Yolo County Sheriff’s deputies were posted inside the half-empty courtroom. Soon after the courtroom’s clock struck 1:30 p.m., three deputies escorted Reales Dominguez into the defendant’s holding bay.
“Carlos Reales Dominguez — is that your true name?”
“Yes,” he answered from behind the glass.
Reales Dominguez answered in the affirmative three more times:
Yes, he understood his right to a speedy preliminary hearing within 10 days of arraignment.
Yes, his attorney — Yolo public defender Dan Hutchinson — discussed the option of waiving that right.
Yes, he would agree to waive time.
Reales Dominguez, the judge said, presented a “serious danger to society.”
The former UC Davis student’s bail, once $4 million, was revoked, Wolk agreeing with prosecutors’ requests to hold Reales Dominguez without bail. He now awaits a May 22 hearing before Judge Samuel T. McAdam.
Wolk, a Davis resident who served as a mayor and city councilman, revealed he and wife live a short distance from where one of the crimes took place. His wife was walking the family’s dog a quarter-mile from the site of the second attack April 29, he announced from the bench.
Meantime, the questions that haunt Davis remain. If Reales Dominguez is the man who brutally took the lives of two and tried to end the life of a third, what led to his rage?
What led him to the victims, 50-year-old David Henry Breaux, whose moniker the “compassion guy,” told of his love for his Davis community; UC Davis senior Karim Abou Najm, 20, weeks away from graduation, as he bicycled through the city’s Sycamore Park; and the third, 64-year-old Kimberlee Guillory, among the city’s vulnerable, stabbed through her tent in her encampment?
Bruce Hansen of Davis sat through the afternoon hearing. He was at the vigil for the city’s first victim, David Breaux.
He felt today, as much of Davis feels after a week that shook the city: “I feel generally relieved,” he said outside the courtroom. “I’m not as apprehensive walking around Davis. The whole community has that feeling.”
