College Town Rocked by Multiple 'Brutal and Violent' Stabbings - Serial Killer Fears Grow
Police in Davis, California, are looking for a suspect in a series of stabbings that have all occurred within just a few days of one another and have left two people dead.
Investigators believe a man who stabbed a woman on Monday night near the University of California, Davis campus might be the same man who murdered two other people last week in the city.
Some citizens in the area are concerned a serial killer might be among them.
The first stabbing occurred on Thursday when a popular local man named David Breaux was stabbed to death in the city’s Central Park.
KCRA-TV reported Breaux was known around Davis as the “Compassion Guy,” as he would ask people he encountered to define the word “compassion.”
Saturday — two days later — UC Davis student Abou Najm was stabbed to death at the city’s Sycamore Park.
The suspect in the second murder was described as a short, light-complexioned man with curly hair.
Monday, just before midnight, a man who fit that description was reportedly lurking near a homeless encampment in downtown Davis when someone confronted him.
A man named Isaac Cheessman told KCRA-TV that he saw the suspect and spoke to him after he suspected the man was “scoping out” the encampment.
“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,’” Cheessman told the outlet.
Hours later, a 64-year-old homeless woman was stabbed multiple times at the encampment and was transported to an area hospital where her condition was last listed as critical.
The woman was heard yelling out, “Oh God, help please, he’s here.”
Cheessman’s wife Christine Barrios said that people in Davis’ homeless community were already looking out for one another after the second stabbing.
“It’s hard to sleep,” she said. “We started sleeping in groups because of it. We didn’t want to be alone.”
Shortly after the third stabbing, the Davis Police Department issued a statement to the public on Facebook to be on the lookout for the suspect.
Officers conducted a thorough search of the area, but it yielded nothing.
In a news conference on Tuesday, Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel addressed the violent nature of the stabbings.
Pytel also said investigators are still trying to assess if the three stabbings are all related.
“The attacks with knives were particularly brutal and violent,” he told reporters. “These were not stabbings where a person would normally be a victim of a robber or something like that, where there’s just a couple of wounds.”
The department is working with the FBI to determine whether the city is dealing with a serial killer.
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