‘Time will tell’: Davis stabbing suspect awaits state hospital stay before murder trial

The case against Carlos Reales Dominguez, the man held in the deadly Davis knife rampage that shocked the city this spring, is over — for now.

“Only time will tell,” Yolo Superior Court Judge Samuel McAdam said as he dismissed jurors Monday morning. “The law and the facts of the case will dictate where this goes.”

Yolo County prosecutors last week agreed that Dominguez, charged with two counts of murder with special circumstances in the knife attacks that killed 50-year-old David Breaux and 20-year-old graduating UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm at separate Davis city parks, as well as attempted murder in a third attack that seriously wounded Kimberlee Guillory, 64, as she slept in her Davis homeless encampment, was incompetent to stand trial and aid in his own defense.

Jurors in the weeks-long competency trial in Woodland were excused Monday as the former UC Davis student now prepares for his commitment to state hospital where a bed, doctors and treatment await on the road back to competency.

How long that will take is unclear. Reales Dominguez will likely not be placed at a state facility until October. A hearing to determine where he will go is set for Aug. 17.

Until his transfer to a state hospital, Reales Dominguez will remain in custody at the Yolo County Jail in Woodland. McAdam last week ordered that jail medical staff involuntarily medicate him — the first dose of anti-psychotic medication he will receive since a single dose on July 13, defense attorney Yolo County deputy public defender Daniel Hutchinson said.

“Yolo County is not equipped to provide the care that he will get at a state hospital,” Hutchinson said, “but at least he will be medicated.”

Reales Dominguez’s attorney declined to speculate Monday whether he can be restored to competency and face trial.

“I don’t know,” Hutchinson said following the brief morning proceeding that formally ended the competency proceedings. “The hope is that he will be.”

Yolo County prosecutors continue to stand by their initial position disputing defense experts’ findings that Reales Dominguez exhibited signs of schizophrenia.

But Hutchinson, after the competency trial concluded, called the evidence “overwhelming. I thought it was clear from the beginning.”

Jurors listened to hours of testimony from Dominguez’s friends, roommates and a former girlfriend; and later, from medical experts and mental health professionals who detailed the disturbing months and days leading to the brutal stabbings.

Andrea Barber, of West Sacramento, was one the jurors who heard all of the testimony in the trial. She said she was leaning toward a verdict that found Reales Dominguez mentally incompetent. The more testimony she heard in court, the more she was convinced Reales Dominguez was mentally unfit to face his criminal charges, Barber said.

“I’m glad they reached a resolution,” Barber said in the courthouse hallway after Monday’s hearing.

She recalled seeing Reales Dominguez sitting in the courtroom and hardly moving throughout the trial. Barber said she was alarmed that the people closest to Reales Dominguez weren’t aware the defendant was exhibiting signs of a serious mental illness.

Barber said she was aware of the attacks in Davis earlier this year, but she had no clue she would be deciding Reales Dominguez’s mental competency until jury selection began two weeks ago.

“Once they had experts testifying, I was like ‘Wow, this is real,’” Barber said. “This isn’t like it’s on TV.”

Throughout the trial, she was aware the families of the slain victims were in the courtroom. Maria Breaux, Breaux’s sister, attended the trial. Several members of Abou Najm’s family sat in the gallery during the proceedings wearing T-shirts with a photo of the UC Davis student.

The families were not in the courtroom Monday morning.

Barber remembered seeing Abou Najm’s family, saying, “You just felt for them.”