The former UC Davis student who police say went on a stabbing spree in California appeared at Yolo Superior Court in Woodland looking disheveled after not showering for three months and going on a hunger strike.
Carlos Reales Dominguez, who was charged with murder in the stabbing of two people and the attempted murder of a third, showed up in court wearing a green safety vest with his overgrown long black hair covering his face.
The Yolo County Superior Court Jurors will ultimately decide if he is mentally competent to participate in a criminal trial.
His attorney, Yolo County public defender Dan Hutchinson, said he would present evidence that proves Dominguez began showing signs of schizophrenia toward the end of his freshman year.
‘He sits there each day in his empty cell, unclothed, unmedicated, untreated for his mental illness,’ he said of Dominguez, who is observed every 15 minutes because he is on suicide watch.
Carlos Dominguez appears at Yolo Superior Court in Woodland, Calif., on Monday, July 24
Dominguez pictured at the time of his arraignment on May 5th
Dominguez pictured during his last appearance in court on June 20 appearing gaunt and unkempt
Dominguez was charged with murder in the stabbing of two people and the attempted murder of a third. He was arrested on May 4
Authorities said Monday that Dominguez has not showed since his arrest in May
‘He has not showered a single time and if he ever has brushed his teeth nobody appears to have seen that,’ he added.
To be found mentally unfit to stand trial, the defense must show that Dominguez is unable to understand court proceedings, assist his attorney in his defense, and understand his own status in the criminal proceeding.
But prosecutors argue against this defense and claim Dominguez is ‘toying with the system’ and he deserves to face a criminal trial.
Frits van der Hoek, Yolo County deputy district attorney, told jurors his team will present evidence showing that the former student is not incompetent and is only acting unfit for trial intentionally.
He added that the court-appointed expert who claimed Dominguez was unfit for trial needed more time to analyze him.
If the jurors find Dominguez unfit to stand trial, he would treated at a state mental health hospital instead of continuing with a criminal trial.
The jury selection began Monday. Potential jurors were asked questions about schizophrenia, mental health disorders, and the death penalty.
Dominguez, who sat emotionless on Monday as the judge and the lawyers addressed potential jurors, was a third-year student of the University of California, Davis.
He was expelled April 25 when prosecutors claimed he was responsible for three stabbings on or near the campus.
His attorney, Yolo County public defender Dan Hutchinson, said he would present evidence that proves Dominguez has been showing signs of schizophrenia
The Yolo County Superior Court Jurors will ultimately decide whether he is mentally competent to participate in a criminal trial
Dominguez was arrested on May 4, a week after the first body was found. He was charged in the murder of a 50-year-old homeless man and a 20-year-old UC Davis student. He also attacked a homeless woman in her tent but she survived.
The wave of attacks began with the fatal stabbing of 50-year-old David Breaux, known as the ‘Compassion Guy’ who was killed in Central Park on the bench where he often slept.
Davis police said it was a ‘particularly brazen attack’ and there were no eyewitnesses.
Breaux, who was a fixture in the community for over the past decade, was ‘instrumental’ in the addition of a ‘Compassion Bench’ at the corner of 3rd and C Streets in 2013.
‘The death of David Breaux is utterly and completely devastating,’ Davis Mayor Will Arnold said. ‘Many of us knew David. We talked with him. We shared in his vision for a kinder world. We connected on what it means to be human and humane.’
The bench is where he would ask people their definition of the word ‘compassion.’ He later published his notes as a collection of anonymous writings.
‘Like so many of you, I am grieving the death of David Henry Breaux, known as the ‘Compassion Guy.’ … David led a life with real purpose, to connecting humanity for the greater good, something we should all aspire to do,’ the UC Davis chancellor said in a statement.
A person was apprehended by police soon after 5pm on Wednesday on a quiet, tree-lined street just a block from where a student was killed on Saturday
On Saturday, another stabbing took the life of UC Davis senior Karim Abou Najm. The 20-year-old computer science major was on his way home when he was killed at Davis’ Sycamore Park
The wave of attacks began with the fatal stabbing of David Breaux, known as the ‘Compassion Guy’ who was killed on the park bench where he often slept
On April 29, UC Davis senior Karim Abou Najm, 20, was on his way home from an undergraduate awards ceremony at around 9:15 pm when he was fatally stabbed.
Then on the morning of May 1, a 64-year-old woman was stabbed through a tent at a homeless encampment at around 11:46 pm. She was left in critical condition but survived.
Police confirmed that Dominguez was stopped by several patrol officers on Wednesday evening and that he spoke with them and agreed to come back to the station.
In his backpack they found a ‘large hunting-style knife’ that was consistent with witness accounts of the attacks and with the weapon police were looking for.
Michael Shearer, who has lived in Davis since 1998, told the Sacramento Bee at the time that he saw police apprehend Dominguez while walking his dog on the said evening.
‘There was a guy walking along and a whole bunch of police cars came down Pine Street and they stopped a guy who fit the description, carrying a backpack,’ he told the newspaper.
He said the person arrested matched the description provided by witnesses of some of the stabbings – a person with dark, shoulder-length hair and wearing black Adidas track pants.
‘There wasn’t any altercation, but they talked to him for five or 10 minutes and then they put him in the police car and they drove away,’ he added.
The suspect was first spotted by somebody who was walking through the park at around 3:30 pm and saw someone matching the attacker’s description sitting alone in the children’s playground.
‘He made eye contact with me and came toward me rather briskly,’ the man, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Davis Enterprise at the time.
‘He was walking around sort of aimlessly, which I thought was odd,’ said the witness, who ‘kept an eye on him’ as he wandered through the park and through the neighborhood to the east.
A memorial set up at the compassion bench in Davis to honor David Henry Breaux, 50, who was found stabbed to death last week. He was a fixture in the community for over a decade
Volunteers from the Yolo County Search and Rescue Team look for evidence from the stabbing murder of Karim Abou Najm near Sycamore Park in Davis, California
Shearer said if the person is the culprit, he was surprised that he would have come back to the scene.
‘I wouldn’t be back here if I were him. That makes no sense. So he must have a mental illness or some problem,’ he told the Bee.
Shearer said the spate of stabbings had frightened the entire community. ‘Everybody’s terrified,’ he added. ‘Really, I mean, this isn’t normal, and it’s so arbitrary. You just don’t know.’
Pytel said police were called to the most recent stabbing where an unidentified 64-year-old woman ‘was able to provide a description of the assailant and she was able to tell us what happened’.
Isaac Chessman and Christine Berrios, a couple in a neighboring tent, told KCRA they heard the woman screaming for help. Chessman added that he believed he encountered the suspect earlier that day.
‘So we’re sitting in front of the tent, and I said, ‘Babe, this isn’t feeling right,’ and I see a dude run across the way and started running, but he would stop along every tree to blend in with the tree because it’s dark. I noticed that because that’s something you would do if you’re scoping something out,’ he said.
‘I said, ‘Hey bro,’ and he starts walking normal, and then I said, ‘You look like the dude they’ve been describing that’s been stabbing people.’ He takes off and I started to take off after him and my wife is like, ‘Don’t leave me here’,’ Chessman said.
