New court documents filed in Alameda County describe a bitter custody dispute and allegations of abuse in the months before Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old New York Times executive, was shot dead in a parking lot at the Dublin Sports Grounds in Dublin, California, on Saturday afternoon.
Witnesses told police that Shouyong Zhang, 77, and Shili Chen, 77 — McKinsey’s in-laws — took turns firing at him. Investigators say they are examining the family’s ongoing conflict as a possible motive.
McKinsey’s wife, Candice Jang, had filed for divorce in 2025, alleging her husband had become abusive toward her and one of the couple’s young children. In an August custody filing obtained by the California Post and first reported by The Mercury News, Jang wrote that she and the couple’s children learned to avoid setting off McKinsey’s temper.
“During our marriage, the children and I learned to avoid provoking Jonathan lest he became angry. In my experience, appearing agreeable or happy around him was sometimes a means of avoiding his anger,” Jang wrote in the filing.
Jang also alleged that McKinsey had given the couple’s three children — ages 3, 5 and 7 — a book about a young girl mourning her mother’s death as a birthday present.
“Jonathan dismisses my concern about a book he provided to the children concerning the death of a mother. He omits the context that makes the conduct frightening to me. Jonathan has previously threatened to kill me and my parents,” Jang said in the filing.
She added that, given prior threats against her life, she found the choice of gift “deeply disturbing and frightening.” Jang also claimed her husband routinely blamed others rather than take responsibility for problems in the marriage.
McKinsey and Jang married in 2010, after McKinsey transitioned from female to male, according to the filings. Jang filed for divorce in 2025 amid the custody battle. She had sought a restraining order against McKinsey that year, and he filed one against her in response. McKinsey was also charged with two misdemeanor counts of child abuse; he was released from jail on the condition that he complete parenting classes.
In a subsequent filing, Jang updated the court on custody matters and disputed testimony she said her husband had given. The couple had been scheduled to appear in court over custody this coming Friday, before the shooting took place.
McKinsey had worked at the New York Times since early 2023, first as a senior engineering manager for the paper’s games platform, and was named director of engineering for games player experience in late 2025.
The investigation into the shooting, which took place in broad daylight at a public sports facility in Dublin, remains ongoing. Authorities have not released further details on the charges against Zhang and Chen.
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