Rattled but resilient: Davis moves forward after stabbing suspect arrest and a ‘shocking’ week

After a week of trauma and tragedy, the Davis Farmers Market on Saturday looked remarkably normal.

Shoppers selected strawberries, tomatoes and nuts. Children squealed and chased after colorful balls inside the normally comfortable confines of Central Park.

But ask anyone about the three vicious stabbings and five days of fear Davis experienced over a week, and you’ll find a community trying to make sense of a sudden rash of unusual violence. The city, which grew up around a thriving and inviting UC Davis, also wrestled with the arrest of a student who, until April 25, blended in like anyone else on campus and around town.

Residents said they were relieved by the Thursday arrest of 21-year-old Carlos Reales Dominguez, who has been formally charged with killing two men and seriously injuring a woman during a series of stabbings from April 27 to May 1.

But they are also mourning those who died, feeling compassion for Reales Dominguez and grappling with all the attention their city has received.

“In any big circumstance or turmoil, you never really think it’s going to happen to you,” said Joey Thomas of Dewey Farms, who was at the market selling his almonds, walnuts and pistachios. “Regardless of the situation, regardless of the community, you never really think, ‘Oh, that could happen here.’”

Davis recovers after ‘shocking’ stabbings

As farmers market patrons trickled into the heart of the city, some stopped to place flowers at a memorial for stabbing victim David Henry Breaux that’s formed at the Compassion Bench at Third and C streets. Breaux self-published a book on compassion and helped get the bench installed on the corner.

Daniel Speer, a UC Davis graduate student, was among those who left a tribute.

“Davis is very much an exception to the rule in a lot of ways, and for someone to enact violence in a place like this is really unfortunate,” he said.

At the market, Donna Wren of The Peach Farm in Winters was selling her first tomatoes and cucumbers of the season. She said the stabbings were “very shocking, because there’s very little that happens here that hits the news like this.”

Wren lives up the road in Woodland and feared for her own safety before the stabbing suspect was arrested.

“We’re like, ‘Is this guy going to leave Davis and pop up somewhere else?’” she said.

Wren didn’t know what to expect when she came to the market after the events of the past week.

“Just the last, like two days, people are kind of coming out again,” Wren said. “Literally, downtown was a ghost town there for a couple of days. People (were) really scared.”

Balancing grief with compassion

At Central Park, Jason Wiener played with his two young sons, Edward and Alfred Landman-Wiener. As the boys chased after a ball, Wiener reflected on an emotional week. He worked in an office next door to the father of stabbing victim Karim Abou Najm while he was completing his Ph.D. at UC Davis.

Wiener called Majdi Abou Najm a friend, mentor and “compassionate person” and said he is “truly devastated” for the family.

“When I saw Karim’s name, it really struck me, because he has the same name as his father,” Wiener said. “And I sat there for a minute and was taken aback — because I was like, ‘Is this Majdi’s son?’”

Wiener said he and his family took extra safety precautions at home while police searched for the suspect. In spite of the fear and sadness that came with the stabbings, Wiener has also been considering what could have caused someone to commit them.

“In a way, I do feel for that person a little bit,” he said. “I don’t know what was going on in their mindset. I guess in a way I have some compassion there. Something must have gone wrong in that person’s life to have pushed them to make those decisions. And I feel bad about that — that they weren’t able to find support or find a way out of it and had to resort to what they did.”