Umar Abdullah told WTVT-TV that his neighbor in a Tampa Bay-area apartment house began to complain about noise after Abdullah’s daughter was born last year.
“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.”
He said that he began noticing an odd chemical odor in his home around May. The family replaced the water heater, checked their appliances, and had crews come out to check the home but found nothing. They were suffering from grogginess, sickness, and vomiting.
The smell returned in June, and he became suspicious, so he set up a security camera outside his door.
“This chemical odor came back,” Abdullah said. “I installed a hidden camera outside, because we were suspecting someone is basically tampering with our place from outside. And then we got our neighbor injecting something through our door.”
Abdullah said it happened several times before he called police and his neighbor, Xuming Li, was arrested. The video shows him filling a syringe before leaning down to apparently expel the chemical into the apartment under the door.
Li was charged with numerous counts of battery and possession of a controlled substance.
Abdullah wonders if the chemicals would have been lethal had they not been able to catch their neighbor in the act.
Xuming Li was enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the chemistry department at the University of South Florida, but a spokesperson for the school said he was no longer enrolled as of summer 2023.
The Tampa Police Department later said that the chemicals injected into the apartment included methadone and hydrocodone, two opioid pain medications.
Li’s attorney told WFLA-TV that he had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Here’s the shocking security video:
I’d bet a week’s salary that Li is from China. –TPR
