A New York Times games engineering director was gunned down in a California parking lot, police say, and his 77-year-old parents-in-law were arrested as family court records surfaced.
Jonathan McKinsey, 40, was found with multiple gunshot wounds in the parking lot at Dublin Sports Grounds in Dublin, California, on Saturday around 3 p.m. and died at the scene.
Police quickly took into custody Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77 and identified as McKinsey’s parents-in-law. The pair were booked into Alameda County’s Santa Rita Jail and held without bail on charges that include murder, felony conspiracy, child endangerment, and dangerously firing a gun, with arraignment set for Wednesday.
Reporting on the case describes witnesses saying two masked shooters approached McKinsey and took turns firing before walking away. A nearby sergeant saw McKinsey on the ground as officers rushed in. Witnesses flagged the pair to police and pointed them to a black sedan, where they were detained.
Witness Assad Razawi told local outlets he heard several gunshots and saw the victim drop. He described the scene in stark terms.
Razawi said of McKinsey:
"(His) head and chest were bloody."
Razawi also told the San Francisco Chronicle the shooters calmly walked off before being found at the sedan. Authorities confirmed the suspects are McKinsey’s in-laws. Officers have not stated a motive and have not said whether earlier family allegations are connected to the killing.
Fox News reported that Dublin Police Services thanked witnesses and community members whose help was critical to the swift arrest, and that no suspects remained outstanding after the detention at the scene.
A New York Times spokesman confirmed McKinsey had worked at the paper since 2023 as head of engineering for games player experience. He previously worked as an engineering manager at Splunk and studied at UC Berkeley. Supporting accounts also list earlier stops that included NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, HP, and Oracle.
Zhang and Chen, both listed as Dublin residents in charging accounts, face first-degree murder and related felony counts. They remain held without bail pending the Wednesday arraignment.
Court records summarized in coverage show McKinsey was charged last year in Alameda County with two counts of misdemeanor child abuse. A probable cause declaration said a woman told police her husband, identified as McKinsey, struck her six-year-old son in the face with an open hand.
The same records describe an alleged 2018 domestic incident in which the woman said McKinsey bruised her by grabbing her left arm. Deputies said they found a two-year-old left unattended in an upstairs bedroom while McKinsey had gone shopping. McKinsey pleaded not guilty in both matters and was released on bail on the condition he complete 12 parenting classes.
The New York Post reported that those 2025 misdemeanor child-abuse charges came after the alleged strike on the boy, and that the in-laws now stand charged in the killing.
Additional court filings described in national coverage name McKinsey’s wife as Candice Jang and show mutual domestic-violence restraining-order requests, custody disputes, and a divorce case with a status hearing set for Oct. 10. A neighbor told the Chronicle McKinsey had recently moved out of the home he shared with his wife and three children. Another neighbor said a detective knocked Saturday night asking about the family.
Investigators have not offered a public theory of motive. They have not said whether the earlier abuse allegations, the restraining-order fight, or the pending divorce played any role. The firearms allegedly used and any recovery details were not described in the initial accounts.
What is established is narrower and harder: a 40-year-old tech executive dead in a public parking lot in broad daylight; two 77-year-old in-laws in custody on murder charges; and a trail of family-court paper that was already thick before the first shot.
When a household is already in criminal court, family court, and separate homes, the public is right to ask whether the system ever imposed real order, or simply managed the decline until the parking lot paid the price.
