BERKELEY — A UC Berkeley professor smelled a rat — over the years there had been $46,855 in damage from computers that failed, and nearly all of it seemed to affect one particular PhD candidate at the college’s Electronic Engineer and Computer Sciences department.

The professor wondered if the student’s luck was really that bad, or if something else was afoot. So he installed a hidden camera — disguised in a department laptop, and pointed it at the student’s computer. According to police, the sly move captured another PhD candidate, 26-year-old Jiarui Zou, damaging his fellow student’s computer with some implement that caused sparks to fly out of the laptop.

Now, Zou has been charged with three felony counts of vandalism, related to the destruction of three computers last Nov. 9-10. The

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