Lebanese undergraduate student stabbed to death near campus in California

A young Lebanese undergraduate student has been stabbed to death in the northern California college town of Davis.

The victim, 20-year-old Karim Abou Najm, was killed Saturday evening as he was returning home from an awards ceremony on the campus of the University of California, Davis, where he was about to graduate with a degree in computer science.

"The day he left us, he won one of the UC Davis awards, and he was on his way back home," Abou Najm’s father, Majdi, told the local KCRA-TV station. "He was literally five minutes away."

The stabbing attack was the second of three similar incidents in several days, prompting the town to issue a shelter-in-place order. 

"We moved from Lebanon in 2018 when the situation in Lebanon was…starting to go [in the wrong] direction and we came here hoping for safety," Karim's father said, referring to Lebanon's financial crisis and other related struggles in the country. He noted that his son was proud of his Lebanese roots.

"He was just six weeks from graduating. This was his last quarter. He was so proud and so happy and so thankful," he said.