"Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel said Breaux had suffered “a significant number of stab wounds” when a passerby found him late Thursday morning at Central Park, a place where for years Breaux sought to raise awareness of compassion and seek others’ definitions of the term.
The Stanford graduate also was the driving force behind the Compassion Corner Earthbench, a public art sculpture located on Third and C’s southeast corner that, on Friday, became a place for people to remember Breaux and grieve.
His killing remained unsolved Friday as police issued a plea to the public for any information that would help them locate Breaux’s assailant.
Anyone who was in the Central Park area during the early-morning hours Thursday, or has surveillance cameras facing towards the park or downtown area, is urged to contact the Davis Police Department at 530-747-5400 or policeweb@cityofdavis.org.
Those with information but wish to remain anonymous can call the department’s tip line at 530-747-5460.
‘Difficult and disturbing’
The homicide investigation began at about 11:20 a.m. Thursday, when a passerby called police to request a welfare check on a man at Central Park. Officers arrived to find Breaux, seated on a park bench near the north playground area, already deceased.
Pytel, who disclosed the brutal nature of the Breaux’s death later that night, said he would deploy additional bike and foot patrols in and around the park as the investigation continues.
Detectives have not recovered or identified the weapon used in the homicide.
“We realize it is difficult and disturbing when crimes of this nature occur in our community, especially in a public space that many consider to be the heart of our downtown area and city. The department would like to assure the public that all available resources will be used to ensure the safety of our community,” the agency posted on its Facebook page Friday morning.
Police also reminded the public to remain vigilant about their surroundings, and to call 911 to report any suspicious or violent behavior.
Pytel said Thursday that while Breaux was known to police because of his work in the community, he had no known problems with anyone who might wish him harm.
News of his death brought a flood of tributes, through social media and on the Compassion Bench where mourners left flowers and written notes. Coincidentally, Friday marked the 10-year anniversary of community members gathering to construct the bench.
“This was his office,” Davis resident Terry Tafoya said as she penned her own note. She recalled meeting Breaux on what she described as a “dark day,” having heard of yet another school shooting in the U.S.
“I was just feeling very negative,” Tafoya said. “We sat and we talked, and he made me realize that going out there and doing something was compassion.”
His murder “shakes the core of your belief system of what is good,” Tafoya added. “But I think he’d want us to find some goodness in what he was trying to do, and not look at the negative.”
Mayor Will Arnold issued a statement calling Breaux’s death “utterly and completely devastating.”
“David was well-loved and well-known, an icon to the core of our community. He touched so many lives in such a determined and inspired way that many of us in our lifetimes will never reach,” Arnold said.
“David asked us to reflect on our actions and words. So let us do that together to honor his memory and acknowledge the work he did to make this world, and Davis, a better place.”
A compassionate life
Community members are invited to a vigil in Breaux’s memory, held by the Davis Phoenix Coalition, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Third and C streets.
“The tragic news of the stabbing death of one of the kindest people in our community is overwhelming,” the coalition posted on Facebook. “Join us in celebrating the kindness that David inspired us to share with each other.”
The Davis Enterprise featured Breaux in a 2011 story about his compassion project, which he was inspired to launch after hearing Karen Armstrong, a former nun, speak about the crucial need for compassion in a chaotic world.
“Compassion goes beyond communities, it recognizing others’ humanity. The world is drawn together and yet farther apart because of compassion,” Armstrong had said.
After hearing the speech, Breaux began to think of his own definition of compassion, and was eager to see how those around him felt, wrote Rachel Levy, the article’s author.
“At that moment, I had rarely thought of my own concept of compassion,” Breaux said. “Over the course of a week, I was dissatisfied with it. That is when I began to get a collective definition.”
After hearing the thoughts of others, Breaux’s ideas began to shift. After weeks of collecting definitions, Breaux moved from the Bay Area to Davis and continued his compassion project.
“I noticed that it fostered human relations between myself and others, it fostered ideas on compassion; I noticed that I was learning about compassion, that it was a positive response to it,” Breaux said.
He gathered definitions of compassion from more than 3,000 people. With the help and encouragement of Davis community members and volunteers at Grace House, a former downtown shelter, Breaux published them in “Compassion Davis, CA: A Compilation of Concepts on Compassion.”
Breaux later embarked on a Compassion Tour, a year-long endeavor during which he traveled to 12 cities around the country, chosen based on their commitment to compassion. He documented his experiences in an online journal.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene "
The guy was a celebrity. He would stand on the corner across from central park with book for others to write in.
Can you define "Compassion"?
I did it once when i was just back in town. Before the accident and while I was attempting to avoid doing anything at all.
I also did not have cash for him as I went broke as soon as I hit town.
I had gotten a trip to DC where I was rehired and went shopping. I was size zero from the stress of dealing with my mother once she got it that she was dying.
She had gone completely crazy with only twenty percent of her brain left. She caused so much trouble I still haven't recovered.
I was followed everywhere by this family growing up and three generations later they were still doing it. Stealing the clothes and purse while leaving you drugged.
It is a long story but i woke up not in DC but in Davis. i did not know what to do and the people i called arrived too late to save me from their needles that wipe out memories.
I had a horrible headache as if i had cracked it which I assume did happen, the violence of this group of people from Germany who just cant stop calling making not so nice statements.
His story was somewhat different. He made it to Stanford, a school I had briefly gone to as well, he told me. But after graduation he could not make it afterwards.
He was lost in this college town and needed compassion. He was one of the ones I wanted to interview as I completed another bachelors, this time in arts.
Instead I was steered somewhere else while I kept hearing things from the others. It was as if they were plotting my demise and deciding what they should do with e.
I was over 40 by now but it was an unusual amount of interest in me. The main writer for the school newspaper was there taking pictures of me when i was not looking. He was being paid to harass me or perhaps to haze me.
He ended up going homeless and loosing his mind.
This guy got lucky and people began to write in his book which was then published.
He was allowed to sell it for profit and offered a room for a year.
He got the local celebrity of invites and speeches to local groups.
Meanwhile I had an auto accident caused by the same group of people.
All the work I went through to get well while grieving for a woman who had not known what her life should have been but only what these people wanted.
I escaped several times to San Diego only to be ripped out of my residence and deposited back where I had no friends left.
He kept coming back to the community despite the idea he might have made it somewhere else.
He was both charming and above the rest.
He was not cruel but exhausted from his life of striving to get to college and the nothing.
He appeared to have no family but friends in town.
How he wound up laying dying on the ground of the former town cemetery is under investigation.
His life had been blessed and then nothing but a daily survival against the odds of a community without resources.
He survived Covid-19 somehow but did not get past the local animosity towards his type. Not belonging is always an issue and being seen as single is considered ample reasons for ending his life.
He was expendable. He had done nothing with his life. He never lived in any type of luxury according to the opposites.
While some showed him compassion, it is a slow realization when one has gone to school or gotten a job at a federal government such as the national parks or forestry.
Nothing is a guarantee nor is it going to last forever. It is the sad reality that there are those in the world who do nothing but cause problems for others.
The day one wakes up knowing there are no other options because someone else has taken your spot in line because you went to the bathroom.
There is nothing more to do or go as all the compassion in the world ends when others no longer need you in their world.
It should not be this way, many of us thought he might make it writing more but the offers were not there or withdrawn because he was homeless and never going to be excepted anywhere at any time.
The world changed overnight sometime around the year 2000.
It is not where you were when such and such happened but were you were heading.
I was heading back to my career in journalism and ended up in a course about investigation Journalism.
I should have been accepted but instead i was now living in rooms of my own families' homes.
I was not seen as good enough and prevented when real offers came forward.
It is the way the world is now, not helping out those who need help if they have nowhere to go.
No one is going to hire a homeless person, not as a janitor nor as a columnist which he would have been good at.
The university professors don't grade their own papers because they are not qualified. Neither are their graduate students who can't even find the correct edition of a book under review.
No one is going to survive the next generation who don't care about anyone, not even their own families.
Who would target this guy with no money at all compared to the other guy who had just graduated from college.
We had another death in our midst. They say there have been less than forty in two years, but that is only the ones on sight. Not the ones in the hospital nor while they are moving around in the city.
I was not ever a homeless street person but came close enough to them as I worked through the system in order to get what i should have been handed.
Medical disability for a broken back and other injuries from the accident that was not my fault.
Instead, I was blamed by everyone about my situation, and no one wanted to help. not even those who went way overboard on my crazy mother.
Meanwhile, all my families' possessions are being tossed out on the street while they tear down hundred-year-old homes.
Just because we were here first and not stupid enough to believe in a Hitler.
Many believe in Jimmy who pretended to be homeless but would be found with those rolls of paper bills on him. He had access to money and hid it from the friends who no longer want to hear our story.
Why did they not want to hear Davids story?
If one does not work hard to go to school to have a career or something, what is there?
To sit around waiting for Armageddon?
To do nothing during the pandemic and then regret when others are still alive?
There is no rhyme nor reason in how the local communities don't take care of their own.
Someone had a bad night.
Somewhere there is a woman waiting for the authorities to realize all the reports must mean something.
If they find the pattern, they might find a killer or two or three.
All of them named Rachel or James, I would speculate.
None of them will be named John nor Candace who claim not to have blood on thier hands.
But someone does have blood on their soul.
Somewhere over the rainbow...
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