Davis terror: ‘Our peaceful little, liberal college town was suddenly armed and ready’ | Opinion
Despite the frequency of these senseless and violent tragedies, we all seem to have the same response when they occur: “We never thought it could ever happen here.”
You don’t want to have to walk through your community and have memories of terrible tragedies.
Davis was never a place where I felt unsafe. The house I lived in when I was a college student didn’t (and probably still doesn’t) have a functioning lock on the front door. The only crime you ever hear about here is bike theft (something we have all experienced) or the occasional porch pirate.
Opinion
Over the past week, all of this changed after two Davis residents were fatally stabbed, followed by the stabbing of a homeless woman. I have been an emergency medical technician for many years; this was the week work and life merged.
After the first killing, the town was immediately on edge. Central Park, home to our beloved farmers market, was suddenly a crime scene. The grass where we walk our dogs and spend Saturday mornings recovering from our hangovers was now stained with the blood of our beloved local celebrity, David “Compassion Guy” Breaux.
This was not the first such tragedy we have had in the town (notably, Police Officer Natalie Corona was murdered in 2019), but nonetheless, the town responded. Within hours, there was a beautiful vigil planned and the town went into mourning. We all assumed it was a fluke event and that surely those responsible would be quickly brought to justice.
Then came the second killing — this time of a UC Davis student. Within minutes of the news being announced, the town was completely different. Suddenly, nobody was outside. When I went out to walk my dog, people crossed the street to avoid one another. Nobody knew who they could trust and everybody was going into survival mode. Stores closed early, people stayed home from work. Even our local sporting goods store sold out of pepper spray.
Walking through the hallways on campus, you started to overhear people discussing what objects they could improvise into a weapon to protect themselves. Nobody felt safe.
After the third attack, the town virtually shut down. While things were operating as much as possible during the day, as soon as the sun went down every door and window in town was locked. Everybody I know slept with a weapon in their bed. My roommates and I had discussions about the various potential entrance points in our house — something I hadn’t thought about since going to tactical medicine training years ago.
Our peaceful, liberal little college town was suddenly armed and ready. We all barricaded ourselves in the darkest corners of our houses and anxiously refreshed the police department’s Twitter page awaiting any news.
Every person I talked to on campus had their own conspiracy theory about who the perpetrator was and how to stay safe. Even my lab meetings turned from normal discussions of neuroscience into a discussion of how to defend yourself from a knife attack and how to properly tend to knife wounds in the field. It dominated our every thought, and it was impossible to talk about anything else.
Following news of Thursday afternoon’s arrest of Carlos Reales Dominguez, the town felt visible relief. Within an hour of the announcement, I took my dog on a walk to the local park (something we hadn’t been able to do for several days). Instead of crossing the street to avoid each other, people were suddenly back to saying “Hi.” There were kids playing on the playgrounds, dogs chasing rabbits and parents chatting. Life had returned to Davis.
Though we are still the same little hippie college town we have always been, there is no doubt that everybody here, regardless of how much you might have been previously exposed to violence, has been irreversibly altered by this week’s events.
I want to convey my deepest sympathies to the victims and their families. This has been a great tragedy, and though I wasn’t personally affected by the violence, I want to acknowledge those who were and appreciate that their lives will never be the same.
Justin Weiner is currently a physiology PhD student at UC Davis, where he also earned his B.S. in 2021. Throughout his time in Davis, Justin has been serving the community as an EMT, an EMT instructor and as a prominent member in the local Jewish community where he serves on the Hillel At Davis & Sacramento Board of Directors and on the UC Davis Chancellor’s Advisory Council on Jewish Student Life.
