Liren Chen Google engineer beats wife Xuanyi Yu to death amid new firings. Victim also id as Google employee found savagely beaten at couple’s Santa Clara home.
A Google software engineer covered in bruises, scratches and his shirt splattered with blood was arrested Tuesday after allegedly ‘viciously’ beating his wife to death inside their California home, prosecutors said.
Liren Chen, 27, was allegedly found in a ‘catatonic state’ with a swollen and bruised hand and his wife’s pulverized body nearby.
The savage beating unfolded in Santa Clara, a ritzy city in the heart of Silicon Valley and just miles from Google’s headquarters.
Police were called around 11 a.m. to conduct a welfare check home by a concerned friend who said neither Chen nor his wife were answer their phones or the door, according to the Santa Clara District Attorney.
The friend, however, could see Chen inside the home ‘motionless on his knees, had his hands in the air and was staring blankly.’
Police made their way inside and found his wife dead on the floor in the bedroom directly behind where Chen had been kneeling, officials said.
She had suffered severe blunt force injuries to her head.
Chen’s clothing, legs, arms and hands were ‘spattered with blood’ and his arms were covered in scratches, according to the DA.
His right arm was ‘extremely swollen and purple.’
Chen was charged with murder, but his arraignment has been postponed because he’s been hospitalized.
Both Chen and his wife — identified by multiple outlets as Xuanyi Yu — worked for the mega tech company.
‘We are shocked and deeply saddened by what has happened to Xuanyi,’ Google spokesperson said in a released statement.
‘Our thoughts are with her family at this time, and we will work to provide support to them and to co-workers who are processing this tragic news.’
According to his LinkedIn profile, Chen was a software engineer who worked on a YouTube Shorts recommendation algorithm for Google.
Both Yu and Chen studied in China at Tsinghua University and at the University of California San Diego, according to their LinkedIn pages.
The murder became national news in China and landed on the front page of The World Journal, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the US, which highlighted unverified rumors that the killing was connected to Google’s recent round of hefty layoffs.
‘Domestic violence deaths have been falling in our county but that does not measure the depth and destructiveness of the violence,’ District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement.
