Authorities arrested a 21-year-old former student at the University of California at Davis on Thursday in connection with three stabbings that rattled the college town.
The suspect, Carlos Dominguez, 21, was in his third year at the school, until April 25 two days before the first stabbing, the university said via Twitter Thursday. He was separated from the university for academic reasons, according to the school.
Police did not provide a motive and said Dominguez has been arrested for two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.
“He was a biological sciences major,” Melissa Lutz Blouin, a spokeswoman for the university, told The Washington Post. “At the time of his arrest, he lived off campus.”
Through the week, police had been scouring the city’s downtown with drones and search dogs. University students said they felt unsafe going to class with the suspect still at large, and the city’s residents were left deeply concerned. Police had said that the first two stabbings were “particularly brutal and violent.” Davis is a college town of roughly 67,000 people, about 70 miles northeast of San Francisco. No homicides have been reported in Davis since 2019.
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The city had added security patrols around parks and evening classes at UC Davis went remote, as residents and students were encouraged to avoid traveling alone once the sun set.
Police first brought in Dominguez on Wednesday afternoon after 15 people reported seeing a person that matched the suspected stabber’s description, Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel said at a Thursday news conference.
He was wearing clothes that matched descriptions of the suspect and was in the same park where the second stabbing had occurred, callers told the police. One caller said they were following the potential suspect while on the phone, which was how authorities eventually found and arrested Dominguez.
Police first charged Dominguez for possessing a “hunting-style” large knife, Pytel said. After interviews and additional investigations, police charged Dominguez for the stabbings. Pytel added that he classified Dominguez as a serial killer. Since the first stabbing, Pytel said law enforcement received hundreds of tips.
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Pytel said he believes the three stabbings are related and Dominguez acted alone.
“He was out wandering a neighborhood where the second homicide had occurred,” Pytel said. “He had a large knife in a backpack, wearing the same clothes from the third stabbing. That’s highly unusual and unique.”
Share this articleShareA lawyer for Dominguez was not immediately available.
The first two stabbings were fatal. David Henry Breaux, 50, a regular fixture in the Downtown area and Central Park who was known around town as the “Compassion Guy,” was attacked at Central Park in Davis on April 27.
Karim Abou Najm, 20, a student at UC Davis and a graduate of Davis High School, was attacked around Sycamore Park, less than two miles west of Central Park, on April 29.
The third victim is Kimberlee Guillory. She underwent surgery and was in “critical but stable condition,” Pytel said Tuesday. The attack was in a homeless encampment in the “area of 2nd Street and L Street” on May 1, police said.
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Earlier, police had said they did not know whether the incidents were connected, but that they shared similarities. Witnesses provided a “substantially similar” description of the attacker in the second and third stabbings, Pytel said on Tuesday.
The death of Najm sparked particular concern at the university. Chancellor Gary S. May said in a news conference that “while these incidents have not occurred on our campus, the boundaries between the campus and the city are soft boundaries.”
“We’re all the same community at the end,” he added.
Annabelle Timsit contributed to this report.
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