Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Yurui Xie, 31, who was arrested with her husband on December 8 after their son reportedly told an adult he didn’t want to go home because his father built a cage to lock him in while his mother was at work, was released from the Alachua County Jail after Judge William Davis reduced her bond from $600,000 to $50,000.

Xie’s attorney filed a motion for bond reduction on December 14, stating that there are no allegations of injury to the children; there is no statutory definition for “cages” and a definition taken from the 2nd DCA states that a cage must be “some type of wire or bar boxlike structure or a small restrictive enclosure”; the officer did not note that there was a full-sized mattress in the enclosure; and placing her 2-year-old in an upside-down crib does not meet the definition of “willfully and unlawfully cages a child.”

The motion also states that Xie disputes making statements attributed to her in the arrest report, admitting that she left either child alone and unattended; the children are living with a family member in a different residence; and she is not a flight risk and does not pose a danger to the community.

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According to the motion, Xie moved to Gainesville from China in 2013 to attend graduate school at the University of Florida and earned her Master’s degree in 2016. She worked for the UF Department of Horticultural Science for three years before moving to the Plant Pathology Department as a Research Biologist. On top of her duties as a Research Biologist, she was the Safety Manager and Facility Manager and was screened by the FBI before being hired for those positions. Xie married her husband in 2017 and is a permanent resident of the U.S.

A Motion to Modify Pre-Trial Release filed on December 15 by the State Attorney’s Office requested that Xie be required to surrender her passport before being released on bond.

Yesterday, Judge Davis reduced Xie’s bail to $50,000 and ordered her to surrender her passport.

Xie’s husband, Dustin Huff, remains in the Alachua County Jail on $600,000 bond. No motions have been filed at this time to reduce his bond.