Recently, Tampa police announced the arrest of Xuming Li, a 36-year-old Ph.D. chemistry student, after he was caught on camera allegedly contaminating the doorstep of an unsuspecting family home in Tampa, Florida, with a “chemical agent.”
Umar Abdullah, the father of the family, noticed that after months of complaining about noise from Li’s downstairs residence, his wife and baby daughter suddenly began to feel dizzy and ill. After investigations from air conditioning companies, plumbers, and even the fire department came up empty, Abdullah and his family continued to be haunted by the mysterious odor.
“He complained about footsteps. He complained about door closing sounds,” Abdullah said. “My landlord and I did a simulation, and we could hardly find any sound.”
With nowhere else to turn, Abdullah decided to take matters into his own hands. He set up a hidden camera near the doorway of their condo, expecting to find nothing. But what he and his family saw shook them to their core – footage from the camera showed Li crouching and appearing to inject a clear substance beneath the door.
After further investigation, police determined that the substance that Li had injected was a “liquid chemical agent” containing methadone and hydrocodone – both potent opioid pain medications.
Li graduated from the University of Southern Florida in the summer of 2022 with a Ph.D. in chemistry. His LinkedIn page refers to him as “an innovative and goal-driven chemist” who looks forward to “work[ing] together to solve challenging tasks.”
However, while most would consider Li’s past impressive, none of that mattered to the Abdullah family – this ordeal had emotionally scarred them, and Abdullah wants nothing more than to move his family away from the condo they once considered a safe haven.
Li’s booking page labels him as a 6ft Asian male weighing 160lbs, and police have charged him with several felonies, including possession of a controlled dangerous substance and burglary. He was recently released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court again on December 5.
“If we could not have found that incident on the camera, probably after a few days, we might have been dead,” Abdullah said.
At this time, it is unclear how Li obtained the chemical agent or how his access to it was related to his studies.
