Google software engineer from China charged with murder after allegedly beating wife to death in US home, shedding light on domestic violence
- Suspect, victim both elite students who attended top mainland university
- Police say alleged attack was ‘extremely cruel, malicious, cold-hearted’
A 27-year-old Google engineer from China has been charged with murder after allegedly beating his wife to death in the United States in a case that has shocked mainland social media.
The suspect, Chen Liren, is alleged to have repeatedly punched his wife Yu Xuanyi in the head at their home in Santa Clara, a city in the centre of Silicon Valley where Google headquarters are located.
On January 16, the police found Yu, 27, dead on the floor in the bedroom of the home with “severe blunt force injuries to her head”, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney.
Chen was found standing near her staring “blankly”, with an “extremely swollen and purple” right hand, scratches on his arm, and covered in blood splatters.
The police found them after responding to a welfare check request made by Chen’s friend, who said Chen was refusing to answer his phone or the door.
Chen has been charged with the murder of Yu, but by the time of writing had not been arraigned due to his hospitalisation.
According to the San Francisco Standard, if convicted, Chen faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Both Chen and Yu worked as software engineers at Google.
They both studied Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University from 2014 to 2018 and went to study Computer Science at the University of California San Diego in 2018.
The couple bought their house on the Valley Way for US$2.05 million last April, according to the San Francisco Standard.
News of the tragedy quickly spread across mainland social media, with the suspect and victim’s acquaintances sharing their memories of them.
Yu was the top scorer in the national college entrance examinations in her hometown Songyuan city in northeastern China’s Jilin province in 2014.
Her secondary school teacher Zhang Guoliang told the mainland media outlet Hongxing News she had a “sweet and shy” character and grew up in a peaceful family.
Yu told the media she wanted to be “an electronic engineer and apply novel technologies in real life in the future”.
Chen was also an elite student in a top-notch secondary school in southwestern China’s Sichuan province.
A former classmate of his told Hongxing News that he was shocked to learn the news as his ex-girlfriend said he had never beaten her.
According to the World Journal, the largest-circulated Chinese-language newspaper in the US, the charges indicate Chen’s alleged attack involved “extremely cruel, malicious or cold-hearted behaviour”.
Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen noted a rise in domestic violence-related 911 calls, and highlighted the importance of calling the police if people feel “they or someone else is being abused by their partners”.
A Chinese-American attorney in California, Liu Longzhu, said he had represented many Chinese engineers working in Silicon Valley and knew the cohort very well.
“Many of them were elite students and had successful careers, but some have high IQ but low EQ and do not have very good emotional management skills,” Liu said.
The tragedy also renewed concerns about the psychological resilience of elite Chinese students, with many questioning the established educational system that puts academic excellence above mental health.
