Davis stabbings: Police announce arrest of suspect in attacks that killed 2
UPDATE: Davis police announced the arrest Thursday of a suspect in three stabbings that left two men dead and a woman critically injured in the past week, a 21-year-old former UC Davis student who may originally be from Oakland.
Davis police Chief Darren Pytel said Carlos Reales Dominguez, who was a student at UC Davis until last week, was arrested Thursday afternoon on two homicide and one attempted homicide charge.
Davis police are expected to announce an arrest Thursday afternoon in a series of three stabbings over the last week that left two men dead and a woman critically injured.
A law enforcement source with knowledge of the arrest but who was not authorized to speak on the matter told The Sacramento Bee that the announcement involves a “person of interest” detained Wednesday night near Sycamore Park, where a fatal stabbing occurred last Saturday.
Davis police did not respond to a request for comment Thursday morning, but posted an announcement on its Facebook page saying a 2 p.m. press conference was set and that police “have a person detained in connection with two homicides and an attempted homicide that have occurred over the past week.”
UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May told a Sacramento Bee reporter Thursday morning that authorities were planning an announcement of some sort later in the day.
The name of the person of interest has not been released, but a source said he was a Davis resident. Police cautioned Wednesday that no one had been arrested and that other “persons of interest” had been detained during the weeklong investigation.
The source told The Bee the expected arrest announcement involves one person suspected in all three attacks.
The person detained Wednesday at about 5 p.m. a block from Sycamore Park matched the description of the suspect in two of the attacks, and was wearing black Adidas pants with a white stripe similar to those seen by witnesses.
The development comes after a series of knife attacks that began April 27 in Davis with the stabbing death of 50-year-old David Henry Breaux, who was found dead in the city’s Central Park.
Two nights later, on April 29, UC Davis senior Karim Abou Najm, 20, was stabbed to death at Sycamore Park. A memorial service is scheduled to take place at 4 p.m. Friday at the UC Davis International Center, 463 California Ave., Suite 3140.
On May 1, just before midnight, a homeless woman was attacked by an assailant who stabbed her multiple times through the side of a tent in a camp at Second and L streets.
The attacker was seen by witnesses at the camp and spotted running away toward downtown, but a massive search of the area and a shelter-in-place order for residents turned up no suspects.
The woman survived the attack.
Although police initially said they could not link all three stabbings as the work of a single suspect, the attacks blanketed the city and UC Davis campus with a sense of fear, as night classes on campus were switched to remote learning and citizens were urged to move at night in groups rather than alone.
Some citizens began their own self-styled patrols in search of a suspect, and police stepped up patrols in the city and on campus as a show of force.
