Berkeley Engineer Poisoning Case: Court Expunges David Xu's Conviction on Oct. 12 as Victim Releases Surveillance Video
BERKELEY, Calif. — An Alameda County Superior Court judge on October 12 granted the expungement of engineer David Xu's felony poisoning conviction over the district attorney's objection, with the victim, engineer Rong Yuan, attending the hearing to oppose it. According to multiple reports, Yuan began suffering vomiting, hair loss and repeated emergency-room visits in 2017. A camera she installed captured Xu, a colleague at Berkeley Engineering and Research, putting a substance into her water bottle; testing identified the heavy metal cadmium, reported at concentrations up to 3.5 million times the federal drinking-water limit, and Yuan's parents also tested positive for cadmium poisoning.
Xu was charged in 2019 with offenses including attempted premeditated murder. In 2023 he pleaded no contest to one felony poisoning count, and in 2024 he was sentenced to two years of probation with one day of jail credit and $7,058 in restitution; Yuan had sought nearly $500,000. Xu completed probation in March 2026 and petitioned for expungement. Yuan began releasing the surveillance video publicly on October 10 and says she still cannot work full time and considers the original punishment far out of proportion to the harm. An expungement does not mean the record disappears entirely.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 阿拉米达县高等法院所在的雷内·C·戴维森法院大楼（奥克兰），Coolcaesar 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）
