At the end of 2008, suspect Wang had a dispute with his employer over transport fees, deposits and other issues. At around 7 p.m. on January 25, 2009, he teamed up with Li and brought a pre-prepared bag of table salt to the company. Wang kept watch while Li slipped through the iron gate under the courtyard wall into the yard and poured the salt into the hydraulic oil tank of an excavator parked there. On February 4, the company found that the excavator would not work and discovered after inspection that someone had put table salt into the hydraulic oil tank. On February 23, police acting on leads arrested the two suspicious men, Wang and Li.

    On March 2, Wang and Li compensated the company 68,000 yuan for its losses and obtained its forgiveness. The Liyang Court held that Wang and Li had shown a good attitude in confessing after being brought to justice, had voluntarily compensated the victim's economic losses and obtained forgiveness, and had demonstrated repentance, and therefore handed down the above judgment.

    It is not an isolated case; destroying excavators with table salt is common

    Excavator driver Xiong Jiaxin, because his wages were withheld, poured half a kilogram of table salt into an excavator engine cylinder, causing losses of more than 140,000 yuan. Recently, the Shangrao County Court in Jiangxi Province sentenced Xiong Jiaxin to five years in prison for the crime of intentionally destroying public and private property, and ordered him to pay 141,060 yuan in economic damages.

    Wang Yuzhen hired Xiong Jiaxin to drive an excavator. Wang Yuzhen's father, Wang Yiqi, withheld 3,900 yuan of Xiong Jiaxin's wages as a deposit in May 2003, and Xiong Jiaxin bore a grudge because of this. At around 9 p.m. on May 29, 2003, Xiong Jiaxin went to a shop and bought a 500-gram bag of table salt. Taking advantage of the unattended excavator, he used a bamboo strip to pry open the engine oil cap and poured the prepared salt into the engine cylinder. In the early hours of the next day, afraid that the matter would be exposed, Xiong Jiaxin left without saying goodbye and went alone from Shangrao to Ningbo, Zhejiang.

    On the morning of May 30, because Wang Yuzhen could not find Xiong Jiaxin, she hired another driver. When the driver started the engine, he noticed an abnormal sound, and after shutting it down it could not be restarted. After the manufacturer's technicians inspected the excavator, they found that the engine cylinder block had cracked and that the oil was salty. After the case was reported, the public security organ sent oil samples to the Jiangxi Provincial Analysis and Testing Center for examination, which found that the oil contained NaCl. Wang Yuzhen thus suffered direct economic losses of more than 140,000 yuan.