Disturbing details emerge after New York Times executive allegedly gunned down by in-laws

Police in Northern California are investigating the circumstances around the killing of a 40-year-old New York Times executive who was allegedly shot by his in-laws over the weekend amid a bitter divorce with his wife, according to public records.

A police sergeant who was driving near a Dublin sports complex Saturday afternoon found Jonathan McKinsey lying behind the open trunk of an SUV in the parking lot with multiple gunshot wounds. Around the same time, dispatchers began receiving 911 calls reporting a shooting at the busy park, which has sports fields and a playground and is near the city’s library and police department.

McKinsey was pronounced dead at the scene. According to police, McKinsey’s killers were his in-laws, married couple Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, of Dublin. Both were arrested minutes after the shooting, according to Alameda County jail records.

They are being held without bail on suspicion of murder, willful discharge of a firearm with gross negligence, conspiracy and child endangerment likely to produce great bodily injury or death.

McKinsey was director of engineering for New York Times Games, the company confirmed. He had worked there for more than three years. McKinsey previously worked as an engineering manager at Splunk and UKG, according to his LinkedIn profile. He received a bachelor’s degree at Georgia Tech in 2010 and a master’s degree from UC Berkeley in 2015.

Although authorities have not disclosed a motive in the shooting, the incident occurred amid a contentious legal battle between McKinsey and his wife of more than a decade, Candice Jang. The couple, who were married in Texas in 2011, have each sought restraining orders and made several allegations of abuse against each other over the last year.

In October, Jang also filed for a domestic violence prevention order, which a judge granted. In the request to the court, Jang alleged that McKinsey abused her and their three children for years.

That month, McKinsey was charged in Alameda County with a count of cruelty to a child and corporal injury to a child, both misdemeanors.

The charges stemmed from a report McKinsey’s wife made to police that month in which she alleged that her husband had struck their 6-year-old son in the face with an open hand. At the time, she also told police that McKinsey had grabbed her arm during an incident in 2018, leaving a bruise.

When deputies responded to the family’s home to talk with McKinsey, authorities found the couple’s 2-year-old who had been left home alone, according to a probable cause declaration filed in court.

“It was determined McKinsey had left the child alone for over an hour while he left to go shopping,” a deputy wrote in the declaration.

McKinsey pleaded not guilty to both charges and was released from jail on the condition that he complete parenting classes, court records show. He alleged in court records that he had been set up by his wife, who was responsible for the children during the workweek and had not told him that the child was sleeping upstairs in a crib before she left the house.

Jang and her attorney could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Two months after his wife sought a restraining order, in December 2025, McKinsey filed for divorce — setting off a wave of court filings in which the estranged couple battled over child custody and traded abuse allegations.

McKinsey, a transgender man, accused his wife and his in-laws of abusing him because of his identity, according to his request for a restraining order.

McKinsey alleged in the filings that Jang’s mother used anti-LGBTQ+ slurs against him and one of the couple’s children, the Mercury News reported. Chen allegedly called the child a “disgusting queer” and a “pervert.”

McKinsey accused his wife of pulling medical tubes from his body after a medical procedure related to his transition, according to the publication. He also alleged that Jang’s father punched him in the chest when he was recovering from a mastectomy surgery.

Times staff writers Iris Kwok, Susanne Rust and Richard Winton contributed to this report.