NYT engineering chief killed in Dublin shooting, in-laws arrested

A New York Times engineering executive was killed Saturday in a shooting involving his in-laws amid an ongoing legal battle over domestic violence and child custody, according to police in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The shooting occurred shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, September 26, in Dublin, Alameda County. A Dublin police officer found Jonathan McKinsey, the Times’ head of engineering and games player experiences, lying on the ground at Dublin Sports Grounds with multiple gunshot wounds, police said.

McKinsey was pronounced dead at the scene.

Following a flood of calls from witnesses, Dublin police located and arrested two suspects, Shouyong Zhang, 77, and Shili Chen, 77. The married couple were identified by police as McKinsey’s in-laws.

Both suspects are being held at Santa Rita Jail pending charges, police said in a statement.

Court documents show that McKinsey and his wife, Candice Jang, were involved in a child custody dispute at the time of his death. Last year, a judge granted Jang’s petition for a temporary domestic violence restraining order against McKinsey, according to the court records.

McKinsey filed for divorce in December, and a hearing in the case was scheduled for next month.

In August, the court approved the hiring of a private child custody evaluator.

McKinsey, 40, earned a bachelor’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology before completing a master’s degree in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

He had worked for The New York Times since 2023, the newspaper confirmed.

By Tamilla Hasanova