Man caught on camera poisoning co-worker’s water bottle wants record cleared — for future employment
‘I almost died. I experienced death so, so close, so many times,’ the woman poisoned by the chemical engineer said
A man caught on camera poisoning his colleague’s water bottle is seeking to have charges against him dismissed, according to reports.
David Xu was arrested back in March 2019 after placing toxic heavy metal cadmium in his coworker Rong Yuan’s water bottle at their workplace.
Footage recorded by a secret camera set up by Yuan on her desk and shared with ABC 7 showed Xu opening a small, white container and tipping its contents into his coworker’s own bottle.
In the clip, recorded at Berkeley Engineering and Research, Xu quickly flees before briefly returning to adjust the position of Yuan’s water container.
Speaking to The San Francisco Standard, Yuan said that she had become increasingly ill over a two-year period, beginning in 2017. As her illness caused her to experience hair loss and even led to her missing work because she was vomiting, Yuan noticed that her feelings of sickness were often preceded by her drinking from her bottle.
After catching Xu poisoning her water in two incidents in February and March 2019, Yuan turned the evidence over to the police.
“My blood was frozen,” Yuan said. “I almost died. I experienced death so, so close, so many times.”
Xu is set to appear in Alameda County Superior Court on October 12, over seven years after the two recorded poisonings took place. He had been convicted on one count of poisoning back in September 2023, after a second count of poisoning and an attempted murder charge were dropped as part of a plea deal, according to court records reviewed by The Berkeley Scanner.
Xu was handed two years’ probation, which he completed in March. Now, he is set to ask an Alameda Court judge to dismiss his felony conviction, ABC 7 reports.
Under California law, completion of probation allows individuals to petition the court for expungement, which allows a person to withdraw a guilty or no-contest plea and to have the case dismissed.
According to The Standard, the district attorney’s office has objected to the request for dismissal.
A lab report reviewed by the newspaper revealed that samples taken from Yuan’s water bottle tested positive for an immense level of cadmium - up to 3.5 million times the federal limit for drinking water.
Speaking to the publication, Yuan said that she is concerned that a dismissal will result in Xu’s conviction not being visible to future employers.
“This legal system already failed me,” she said. “This is my last resort.”
The pair worked as metallurgists, with Yuan joining BEAR after Xu. A metallurgist studies the properties of metallic elements and processes them.
Cadmium, a heavy metal, is classified as a carcinogen and can have a toxic effect on the kidneys as well as the skeletal and respiratory systems, according to the World Health Organization.
Yuan told The Standard that, despite a tense first encounter where Xu told her that she could not use the organization’s material characterization lab, her coworker appeared concerned when she told him that she had been vomiting.
“You should work from home until you feel better. No reason to rush in,” he told her. “I think BEAR is moldy (sic).”
