Who is Liren Chen? Google engineer reportedly charged in brutal slaying of his wife

Tragedy struck on Tuesday, January 16, when Liren Chen, a Google software engineer, was found covered in blood and in a state of shock, alongside the brutally murdered body of his wife, in his Santa Clara residence. The 27-year-old's deceased wife, Xuanyi Yu, also worked at Google. Chen was charged with the murder of his wife.

The body of Xuanyi Yu and an extremely roughed-up-looking Chen was reportedly discovered only after a friend had called the authorities for a welfare check on the couple's home. This was after the same friend had allegedly spotted Liren in his home "staring blankly" and not opening the door or picking up calls.

---

A concerned acquaintance had seen Liren Chen "motionless on his knees" before alerting authorities

Liren Chen and Xuanyi Yu were a married couple, both with jobs at Google, living a seemingly normal life, only a few miles away from Google headquarters, in the county of Santa Clara, the heart of California's tech center. They were both graduates of Tsinghua University and later studied at UC San Diego.

According to his LinkedIn page, Liren worked as a Google software engineer for almost four years. He reportedly worked on the YouTube Shorts Recommendation algorithm for the company. Before Google came calling, he also worked as a software engineer intern for the American autonomous trucking company, TuSimple, and as a Computer Vision Research Intern for the Hong Kong-based AI company, SenseTime.

Xuanyi Yu, on the other hand, had worked for Google for two years and eight months as a full-time software engineer. Before her stint at Google, as per her LinkedIn page, she even worked as a full-time Software Development Engineer at Amazon, where she was formerly an intern.

The lives of the seemingly normal couple were revealed to be much more bleak on Tuesday, January 16, around 11 am, when police were called to their Valley Way home for a welfare check. According to the Santa Clara DA's office, a concerned acquaintance had called the authorities after Liren Chen did not answer his door or pick up calls.

According to a press release from the Santa Clara DA's office, the acquaintance could see inside the couple's residence, and discovered Liren Chen behaving rather strangely. The press release quoted the acquaintance, who saw Liren Chen:

"Motionless on his knees, had his hands in the air and was staring blankly."

Immediately after entering the home, officers encountered Liren covered with splatterings of blood on his body and clothes along with scratches on his arms. He was quickly taken into custody. In the room behind where he stood, lay the lifeless body of Xuanyi Yu. The press release further stated:

"She (Xuanyi Yu) had severe blunt force injuries to her head. Chen’s right hand was extremely swollen and purple."

The incident left people distraught (Image via Facebook/Santa Clara Police Department)

District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in the statement that despite the fall in domestic violence death rates, domestic violence 911 calls continued to rise. He said that the fall in death rates did not "measure the depth and destructiveness of the violence". Rosen further stated:

"Anyone who feels that they or someone else is being abused by their partners, please reach out your local law enforcement agency. You are not alone. We can help."

Liren Chen was charged with the murder of his wife and faces possible jail time. However, his arraignment was postponed due to his hospitalization.