Suspect in Custody in College Town Stabbings

UPDATE May 4, 2023 5:09 PM CDT

Police in California have a suspect in custody in connection with three recent stabbings in the college town of Davis. Carlos Domingues, 21, faces two counts of homicide and one of attempted murder, CBS News reports. Police said physical evidence ties Domingues, who was a student at UC Davis until last week, to the crimes. Chief Darren Pytel said he was taken into custody Wednesday after 15 people had called to report a person matching the description of the suspect in a park, per the AP. Dominguez had a large knife in his backpack when he was arrested, Pytel said.

May 2, 2023 6:31 PM CDT

Davis, California has been shaken by three stabbings, two of them fatal, close to the UC Davis campus in the space of five days. Officials in the northern California town issued an overnight shelter-in-place order Monday night after the third stabbing, in which a woman at what the city called a "known transient" camp was seriously injured, CNN reports. Last Thursday, 50-year-old David Henry Breaux, known as "Compassion Guy," was found stabbed to death on the park bench where he often slept. Karim Abou Najm, a 20-year-old UC Davis student, was fatally stabbed in a different park around 9:15pm Saturday.

Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel said Tuesday that investigators are trying to determine whether the crimes are related, the California Aggie reports. "The similarities of the two homicides are that both involved male victims that occurred at Davis parks," the chief said. "The attacks with knives were particularly brutal and violent. These were not stabbings where a person would normally be a victim of like a robbery or something like that, where there’s just a couple of wounds. There were many, and very significant knife wounds." The attack Monday night "had far fewer knife wounds, but still similar in the description provided," Pytel said. He said the victim is still in critical condition.

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Pytel said the city will not be introducing a curfew, but police are stepping up patrols all over town. He said that while there were no witnesses to the first attack, descriptions of the suspect in the second and third stabbings are "substantially similar," ABC reports. The suspect has been described as a college-aged man with a light complexion, thin build, and curly hair. He was last seen wearing black Adidas pants with a white stripe on the side and carrying a brown backpack, police said. (More UC Davis stories.)