Carlos Dominguez to be sent to state hospital after Davis stabbings conviction
Carlos Reales Dominguez will be sent to a state hospital after a Yolo County judge found him legally insane and jurors convicted him of two counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deadly 2023 Davis stabbings.
There was a lot of emotion in the courtroom during Wednesday's hearing as the victim familes read their impact statements.
"Today, you will not hear from us pleads to give the maximum sentence or the strictest punishment as is usually the case in impact statement. In this very odd case, you'll get away with time served simply unbelievable and hard to explain to my family back home," said Nadine Yehya, Karim Abou Najim's mother.
That testimony was in contrast to David Breaux's sister, who is finding a path toward forgiveness after Dominguez killed her brother.
"I forgive Carlos Reales Dominguez," Maria Breaux said. "I hope that despite debillitating mental illness that brought him fear and darkness that made him see shape shifters and shadow people, despite a tragedy that's impacted so many of us, that he'll not only continue to get the right medical attention, that he'll have the strength of heart and piece of mind to be OK."
Dominguez was found not guilty of second-degree murder but was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of David Breaux and UC Davis student Karim Abou Najm last month. He was acquitted in 2025 of first-degree murder.
He was also found not guilty of attempted murder in the stabbing of Kimberlee Guillory, the only survivor of the attacks.
Prosecutors noted in the retrial that Dominguez was suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the attacks. The defense did not dispute that Dominguez carried out the stabbings but maintained he was legally insane at the time because of severe, undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Dominguez will be sent to a state hospital for at least 180 days for treatment. There will be an extension filed for possibly two years by the district attorney and those two extensions could continue to be filed for the rest of his life. That court date is set for April.