Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old New York Times games engineering director, was found with multiple gunshot wounds and pronounced dead in a Dublin, California parking lot after witnesses described an elderly couple opening fire and walking away. Police arrested his wife’s parents, Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, on suspicion of murder as a bitter divorce, restraining-order fight, and child-welfare record crashed into a homicide case.
Fox News reported that officers took the pair into custody at the scene, that no outstanding suspects remained, and that authorities identified no ongoing public threat. The shooting struck at Dublin Sports Grounds, turning a custody-and-abuse court war into a criminal prosecution with constitutional-scale stakes for public safety and equal enforcement of the law.
Zhang and Chen were booked on charges that include murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment, and dangerously firing a gun. An arraignment was set for Wednesday. Dublin police have not released a motive.
The killing happened Saturday just after 3 p.m. in the parking lot at Dublin Sports Grounds. Breitbart relayed a witness account, through the San Francisco Chronicle, from Assad Razawi, who said he heard five or six gunshots and saw McKinsey drop to the ground.
The New York Post reported that witnesses said the pair took turns shooting McKinsey. Other witness descriptions in the case coverage said the elderly couple then walked calmly away before police tracked them to a black sedan at a nearby intersection and made the arrests.
Captain Michael Campos of Dublin Police Services told the Post investigators are casting a wide net on motive and history.
"Part of our investigation is looking for motives from all angles as well as looking at the histories and relationships of everyone involved and associated with the victim and suspects."
Fox News also carried the department’s thanks to witnesses and community members whose help, police said, proved critical to the swift arrests.
McKinsey had worked since 2023 as head of engineering for games player experience at The New York Times. Coverage described him as a biological woman who had surgery to live as a transgender man. He was the estranged husband of Candice Jang and the father of three young children, including a son named Wyatt and a daughter named Alexis.
A neighbor told the San Francisco Chronicle that McKinsey had recently moved out of the home he had shared with Jang and the children. The shooting came a week before a scheduled divorce-case hearing. McKinsey had been limited to two hours of supervised visitation per week since the prior fall and had been seeking more time with the children.
The Daily Mail reported that Jang, approached on a Bay Area sidewalk on Wednesday while with the children, refused to comment on the killing.
Long before the parking-lot shooting, McKinsey and Jang traded explosive allegations in Alameda County court papers. Jang received a temporary restraining order in October 2025. In December 2025, the week before that temporary order was set to expire, McKinsey filed for a restraining order of his own.
In her filings, Jang told the court McKinsey had given their daughter a children’s book titled The Memory String, about a girl mourning her mother’s death, while Jang was still alive. She called the choice deeply disturbing and frightening and said she could not know what he intended by selecting that book.
"Jonathan has previously threatened to kill me and my parents."
Jang’s court papers also argued the children were at risk in his care.
"Due to his violent and negligent history, our children are simply not safe when left unsupervised and in his care."
An attorney filing for Jang later argued McKinsey “is simply prone to domestic violence and child abuse,” and that cited incidents were “far from the first time” he “committed physical violence against me or my family members.” Jang alleged a 2018 wrist-grab that left bruises.
McKinsey’s December filing painted the opposite picture. He alleged weekly physical and emotional abuse by his wife and claimed a 2013 incident in which he said Jang hit him on the head with a frying pan until he agreed to eat a cockroach. He also alleged a cat was submerged in a bucket and then revived, and he alleged abuse directed at the children.
On family conflict over sex and identity, McKinsey wrote that tension erupted when Wyatt wanted to wear his sister’s dresses.
"She blamed me for Wyatt wanting to wear his sister's dresses and told me to get out of "her house" even though we were in the home owned by Candice and I."
McKinsey alleged that Chen called the boy a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert,” used the same language on McKinsey, and admonished him for being transgender. He further alleged Jang pushed him toward suicide and told him “no one would want to be with someone as f***** up and transgender like me.” He claimed abuse during transition-related medical care, including efforts to pull medical tubes, and alleged Zhang punched him in the chest while he recovered from a double mastectomy.
These remain competing court claims. Authorities have not publicly adjudicated which side’s domestic narrative is true, and police have not said the filings establish the motive for the shooting.
Separate from the divorce docket, a 2023 police report accused McKinsey of slapping his six-year-old son hard enough to leave a large bruise in the shape of a handprint. Deputies also found a two-year-old left unattended while McKinsey went shopping, according to the case history recounted in the reporting.
Prosecutors charged him with cruelty to a child by endangering health and corporal injury to a child, both misdemeanors. He pleaded not guilty. A court set bail at $50,000 on the condition that he complete 12 parenting classes. At the time of the killing he was out on bail and attempting to enter a mental health diversion program that would drop the charges upon completion, the Mercury News reporting included in the case coverage stated.
None of those misdemeanor counts is a murder conviction. They do show a live criminal docket, supervised-visitation limits, and a parent fighting for more access while facing endangerment allegations a court had not resolved.
Zhang and Chen, described as Dublin residents and Jang’s parents, now face a first-degree murder theory along with conspiracy and related counts tied to the parking-lot shooting. Arrests came quickly after witness cooperation. That speed matters. It does not finish the case.
Prosecutors will need to prove identity, intent, and participation beyond a reasonable doubt. Investigators will need to determine whether the divorce calendar, the restraining-order duel, the child-abuse docket, or the gender-identity conflict has any causal link the state can present in court. Campos’s statement leaves that door open without selecting a theory.
No public results have been released that settle motive. No coroner’s full public narrative beyond the shooting death description appears in the available case reporting. Absolute calendar labels for some of the relative dates in early coverage also remain thin outside the Saturday afternoon timing and the Wednesday arraignment setting.
The record already forces hard questions about how courts handle mutual restraining orders, supervised visitation, and pending child-endangerment charges when a household is in freefall. McKinsey held a senior engineering post at a powerful media institution while fighting misdemeanor child counts, a divorce, and allegations that cut both ways. Jang held a protective order and accused him of threats against her and her parents. The parents now sit in a murder case.
Law-and-order readers care whether the system documented risk early, whether bail and diversion pathways matched the facts on the ground, and whether violence in family court pipelines draws equal urgency regardless of ideology or newsroom prestige. Media framing that soft-pedals charging language, or that buries the child-safety docket, cannot erase the police reports or the Alameda County filings.
When a parking lot becomes a crime scene a week before a divorce hearing, the public is entitled to cold facts, clean charging standards, and adult accountability, not a protected class of narratives.
