Trial date set for ex-student accused in California stabbing spree that killed 2 in Davis
A Northern California judge on Tuesday said that the trial against Carlos Reales Dominguez, the former UC Davis student accused of a stabbing spree that left two dead and shocked the community of Davis last year, could begin next year at the earliest.
A large volume of discovery — due to three stabbing victims — and delays in the criminal trial after Reales Dominguez’s mental fitness was evaluated made it difficult for public defender Daniel Hutchinson to mount a successful defense this year, said Yolo Superior Court Judge Samuel T. McAdam.
“This case has a lot of moving parts,” McAdam said from the bench in Woodland on Tuesday morning. “It’s a complex case.”
The trial, estimated to last six weeks, was tentatively set for April 28.
Reales Dominguez is charged with murder and attempted murder with special circumstances in the three attacks in late April and early May. David Breaux, 50, and Majdi Abou Najm, 20, were killed in separate Davis city parks days apart. Their slayings were followed by the brutal attack on 64-year-old Kimberlee Guillory as she slept in her tent May 1 in a homeless encampment. She survived the stabbing.
The criminal case against Reales Dominguez was suspended after prosecutors conceded he was mentally incompetent to understand the charges he faced and assist in his own legal defense. But in December, Atascadero doctors helped to heal Reales Dominguez and restored his mental awareness.
McAdam reinstated criminal proceedings against the 22-year-old on Jan. 5.
Before he was transferred to the state, Reales Dominguez at times had refused antipsychotic medication while at the jail.
Reales Dominguez was a UC Davis biological science major who had excelled as a high school student-athlete in the East Bay but was dismissed from the university for academic reasons on April 25, two days before the deadly rampage started. In court testimony in June, his friends described him displaying bizarre behavior, becoming further withdrawn from society.
The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office decided earlier this year it would not seek the death penalty.
