By The Vanguard Staff
WOODLAND, CA – The Vanguard has learned alleged Davis stabbing suspect Carlos Reales Dominguez this past week is now considered competent to stand trial for the fatal stabbing of two men and an attack on a third person in Davis in a violent crime spree that began late last April.
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Reales Dominguez, 21, will return to Yolo County Superior Court Jan. 5 for further proceedings after state hospital officials at Atascadero deemed the former UC Davis student “competent,” said Yolo County District Attorney’s Office. Reales Dominguez is charged with murder and attempted murder with special circumstances in the deaths of David Breaux, 50, and UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm, 20, and the stabbing of 64-year-old Kimberlee Guillory as she slept in her tent in a homeless encampment. Guillory survived.
Reales Dominguez in July had a five-day mini trial to determine his mental capacity to be held accountable for the stabbings—the court and DA agreed he needed to be observed and was not fit for trial.
On his fifth court date, a doctor hired by the defense argued the accused showed symptoms of schizophrenia, but was not able to issue a final opinion because Reales Dominguez had stopped agreeing to meet with him.
“My opinion is that he is most likely schizophrenic, that this is a ‘first break’ of schizophrenia, and that he’s suffering both of the psychiatric illness and the neurocognitive deficits that are often associated with an illness like schizophrenia,” the doctor testified.
The DA said a doctor deemed him competent on Dec. 20.
Breaux, 50, and 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 in a homeless encampment.
In that week, the college town was gripped with fear amid the manhunt to find the suspect in the three attacks.
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 school for academic reasons on April 25, just days before the deadly rampage started.
Reales Dominguez said the “devil was talking to him in his dreams,” his former girlfriend testified. His behavior became increasingly bizarre and isolated, his roommates said in court.
Deputy Public Defender Daniel Hutchinson argued schizophrenia fueled the accused’s actions. 
