Florida man caught on camera injecting toxic chemicals into neighbor's home

When Umar Abdullah and his pregnant wife moved to their new condo in Tampa in June of 2022, everything seemed to be normal.

They met their neighbors, and soon they had a baby girl pitter pattering through their home.

But short after, his downstairs neighbor, Xuming Li, began texting him with complaints about noise coming from the Abdullah home.

The story and texts were first reported by NBC affiliate WFLA.

In the texts, Li said he couldn’t sleep and could hear the toilet seat being moved.

After months of back and forth between the two men, Abdullah said he and his family began to feel groggy, sick and were vomiting.

“I look at my daughter,” Abdullah told WFLA. “Her eyes were full of tears. She was not crying, but her eyes were full of tears.”

He then added that a friend of his smelled chemicals when she went to bring in a package while Abdullah was on vacation.

Upon their arrival, they smelled it too. Abdullah called an air conditioning company, a plumber, his landlord, but no one could seem to find the source of the smell. He even called the fire department, but their tests didn’t reveal anything.

“I never thought after all this that no,” Abdullah said. “I’m just imagining this. No.”

Then, Abdullah thought about his downstairs neighbor, who kept complaining of noises that Abdullah eventually believed didn’t exist. When Abdullah took a skewer to his door, he said he found a crack in the corner that a syringe could fit through and installed a hidden camera in the plant outside.

“Even during war, the worst enemies do not attack the opponent, the other party, with chemicals,” Abdullah told WFLA.

On a day when he said he noticed his daughter sick again, he checked the hidden camera.

The video appeared to show his downstairs neighbor crouching down in front of Abdullah’s front door, but the angle was not clear enough to tell what was going on.

“We were shaking,” Abdullah recalled. “We can’t imagine that he is coming and doing something.”

After adjusting the hidden camera angle, Abdullah said he waited until his daughter got sick again. He checked the footage and saw his neighbor. This time, the video appeared to show his neighbor taking a syringe out, filling it with a liquid, then injecting the liquid into the crack in Abdullah’s doorframe.

“The first that came to my mind — my daughter and my wife,” Abdullah remembered. “They need to be safe.”

Abdullah got his family out of the house safely and called the police.

Li was arrested and charged with multiple felonies, including possession of a controlled substance and burglary.

According to a Tampa Police Department affidavit, a hazmat test found the “liquid “chemical agent” contained both methodone and hydrocodone, opioid pain medications.

Li’s arrest record listed him as a student at USF, but the school told WFLA he was a chemistry PhD student and is no longer enrolled there — his last semester was summer 2023.

Li is out on bond and his next hearing is December 5. He’s also facing lawsuits from Abdullah for domestic violence and the condo association for breach of contract.

In a statement to WFLA, Li’s attorney said Li pleaded not guilty and all of the facts will come in the due course of time.