Police arrest in-laws after New York Times games engineer is shot dead in California

The shooting in Dublin

On Saturday afternoon around 15:00, police officers discovered 40-year-old Jonathan McKinsey lying on the pavement with multiple gunshot wounds in the parking lot of the Dublin Sports Grounds, located roughly 35 miles east of central San Francisco. Witnesses reported that two masked individuals approached McKinsey on foot, took turns firing handguns at him, and then walked away from the sports complex. Emergency personnel declared McKinsey dead at the scene from severe gunshot injuries to his head and chest. A nearby police sergeant discovered the victim while emergency dispatchers received multiple 911 calls from park visitors who pointed responding officers toward the fleeing suspects. Eyewitness Assad Razawi recounted the moment of the attack to local broadcasters.

I saw the man fall to the ground: his head and chest were covered in blood.

Arrest and charges

Officers apprehended the victim's parents-in-law, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both aged 77, on neighboring streets shortly after the shooting. Authorities booked the Dublin couple into provisional detention on suspicion of first-degree murder and related firearm offenses, scheduling their initial appearance before a judge for Wednesday morning. The New York Times confirmed the death of McKinsey, who had joined the company in 2023 as director of engineering for its interactive games division, overseeing player experience software. Before his tenure at the newspaper, McKinsey worked in engineering roles at technology firms including Splunk, Coursera, and Oracle.

Custody disputes and domestic filings

The homicide took place amid a contentious legal dispute between McKinsey and his wife, Candice Jang, whom he married in 2012. The couple, parents to three young children, had separated, and McKinsey filed for divorce after 14 years of marriage. Public court records show that both spouses filed petitions for domestic violence restraining orders against each other during 2025. In October 2025, Jang obtained a protective order after McKinsey faced misdemeanor child abuse charges for slapping their six-year-old son, to which he entered a guilty plea, as well as an allegation of leaving a two-year-old child unattended for more than an hour. At the time of his death, McKinsey remained free on bail while petitioning the court for entry into a mental health diversion program.

Prior allegations and upcoming hearings

Disputes over parental custody continued through 2025 and 2026, leading to competing filings in the Alameda County Superior Court. While McKinsey's visitation had previously been limited to two hours per week under professional supervision, a judge granted him unsupervised visitation rights in August. An additional court hearing in the divorce and custody proceeding was scheduled to take place the week following the shooting. In court filings from December 2025, McKinsey, who was a transgender man, alleged that Jang engaged in abusive behavior and stated that Chen directed anti-LGBTQ+ insults at him and one of their children. McKinsey also stated in those filings that Zhang struck him in the chest while he was recovering from mastectomy surgery.