A California woman who was poisoned by her co-worker for years released a video of the man pouring toxic metal into her water, as he received a slap on the wrist for the crime and is seeking to have his conviction expunged.
Engineer Rong Yuan, 50, began feeling terribly ill in January 2017 after starting a job at the forensic engineering firm Berkeley Engineering and Research, also known as BEAR.
Over the next two years, she suffered hair loss, frequently vomited and had to visit the emergency room many times.
Yuan eventually figured out that she was being poisoned by a co-worker named David Xu, 41, who appeared to have a grudge against her since she was hired because he did not want to share his laboratory.
She had determined Xu was the culprit by setting up a spy camera at her desk that captured a video of him pouring a white substance into her water bottle, which police later determined was the toxic heavy metal cadmium.
Xu was arrested by the Berkeley Police Department in March 2019 and charged with attempted murder and poisoning. He was placed under house arrest with GPS monitoring and remained out of jail for four years as his case stalled in court.
Over the course of those years, Xu was consistently granted more and more freedom to leave the house to spend time with his children. By November 2021, he was released from house arrest. Five months later, he was allowed to travel within the US.
Then in 2023, former Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price took office. Just one year later, she became the first district attorney to be recalled in the county's history due to her disastrous progressive approach that caused crime to soar.
California engineer David Xu, 41, poisoned his co-worker Rong Yuan, 50, for two years while they worked at the forensic engineering firm Berkeley Engineering and Research
Yuan used a spy camera to capture a video of Xu pouring a white substance into the water bottle on her desk. Police determined the substance was the toxic heavy metal cadmium
During her short tenure, however, Price offered Xu an incredibly lenient plea deal of one count of poisoning and one year of probation. He had previously been facing up to life in prison for his initial charges.
Xu pleaded no contest, which is functionally equivalent to a conviction in court but is not technically an admission of guilt.
The judge at his 2024 sentencing hearing appeared shocked at the plea deal Xu was offered, noting that it was 'extremely generous, considering everything in this case,' the San Francisco Standard reported.
The judge doubled Xu's probation to two years, but he never spent a minute in prison and recently completed the probation sentence and every condition included therein.
As a result, Xu is entitled to request a dismissal of his felony conviction, or expungement, under California law. The court will hear his request this week.
If granted, the conviction would not appear on background checks for future employers and could only be used against Xu if he is charged with a new crime.
That prospect is unacceptable to Yuan, who told the San Francisco Standard that she believes Xu has not been punished nearly severely enough and that she was failed by California's judicial system.
She decided to release the video captured by her spy camera to the press and publicly discuss her story for the first time as a last resort in her pursuit of justice.
Xu was arrested in 2019 and charged with attempted murder and poisoning. He was placed under house arrest but granted freedoms over the course of four years while his case stalled
Xu was eventually offered an incredibly lenient plea deal of probation by former District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled after just a year in office due to surging crime
During the period Yuan was being poisoned, she suspected stomach cancer but tests came back negative. Doctors could not diagnose her illness, but she thought she was going to die.
Yuan's parents came from China to stay with her after she had been suffering from terrible symptoms for nearly two years. They feared that her sickness could be terminal.
The engineer finally figured out what was causing her illness after she began to suspect someone was tampering with her water bottle, as her mom noticed a strange, sour taste when she drank from it.
Yuan ordered a spy camera from Amazon and set it up on the wall next to her desk. The device captured a video of Xu pouring a substance from a small white container into her water bottle.
Yuan told the San Francisco Standard that the first time she saw the video, 'My blood was frozen. I almost died. I experienced death so, so close so many times. I cannot let him go.'
She submitted the video to police the same day, and an investigation was launched immediately.
Investigators tested samples from her water bottle, her blood and the blood of her parents as her mother had used water from the bottle to cook for their family. All tested positive for cadmium.
The bottle came back as having 3.5 million times the safe level of cadmium in drinking water set by the federal government.
Yuan said she has suffered long-term health impacts from being poisoned by Xu, who is now seeking to have his felony conviction expunged after completing probation
The metal's half-life in the human body ranges from 16 to 30 years, and long-term exposure can lead to cancer, organ damage and bone disease, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health.
Cadmium poisoning can also cause symptoms including severe nausea, abdominal pain, burning sensations, vomiting, muscle cramps, dizziness, shock, unconsciousness and convulsions.
Yuan said that she has suffered long-term health impacts from being poisoned and that she suspects her father's death from heart failure, which occurred last year when he was 78, was caused at least in part by ingesting the toxic metal.
According to court records reviewed by the San Francisco Standard, the district attorney's office is contesting Xu's request to dismiss his conviction. Yuan will have an opportunity to testify at his expungement hearing and is planning to attend.