New York Times games engineering director allegedly shot, killed by in-laws in Bay Area park
A man and woman in their late 70s allegedly shot their son-in-law to death Saturday afternoon in the parking lot of a Bay Area park, officials said.
A police sergeant was driving near Dublin Sports Grounds, a city park with sports fields and a playground, shortly after 3 p.m. when he saw a man on the ground in the lot, according to the city of Dublin, California. The sergeant stopped to investigate as witnesses began calling police to report a shooting.
Authorities found Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old Dublin resident and New York Times employee, with multiple gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
McKinsey was director of engineering for New York Times Games, where he had worked for more than three years, a Times spokesperson confirmed.
With help from witnesses after the shooting, police arrested two suspects nearby “within minutes,” Dublin officials said.
Dublin resident Assad Razawi said he was out to buy groceries Saturday afternoon when he stumbled across the scene. He had parked his car at a store across the street from the park when he heard five or six shots.
Then he saw a man drop to the ground in the parking lot, bleeding from the chest. A man and a woman who he believed were involved in the shooting walked calmly from the scene at a normal pace, Razawi said.
Other witnesses called the police and pointed officers to the couple walking away, who were quickly caught, Razawi said.
Authorities identified the suspects as 76-year-olds Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, a married couple police said were McKinsey’s mother- and father-in-law. Police arrested Zhang and Chen on suspicion of murder and conspiring to commit a crime and booked them into the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
Jail records show both suspects were also arrested on suspicion of child endangerment, though police did not say whether that was a reference to McKinsey being at the park with a child.
Zhang and Chen were being held in jail without the possibility of bail. An arraignment was scheduled for Wednesday morning.
McKinsey was married in 2011 in Harris County, Texas, public records show. He earned a master’s degree in computer science from U.C. Berkeley in 2015 and started working that year at Oracle as a software engineer, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He held engineering jobs at Coursera, Ultimate Kronos Group and Splunk before joining the Times’ games platform in January 2023.
McKinsey wrote on LinkedIn that he was passionate about computer science education, and had been teaching and managing courses part-time for the last five years at Berkeley and the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he earned his bachelor’s degree.
Court records show that Alameda prosecutors last year charged McKinsey with two counts of misdemeanor child abuse. According to a probable cause declaration, a woman had called Dublin police to report that her husband, identified as McKinsey, had struck her 6-year-old son in the face with an open hand.
The woman also told investigators about a prior domestic violence incident in 2018, during which McKinsey had allegedly grabbed her left arm, leaving a bruise.
When deputies went to McKinsey’s home, they found a 2-year-old child who had been left unattended in an upstairs bedroom while McKinsey left to go shopping, the declaration by Deputy Sheriff Brian Hughes said. McKinsey had pled not guilty to both crimes and had been released from jail on the condition that he enroll in and complete 12 parenting classes.
It was unclear whether this previous episode had any bearing on the violence that unfolded Saturday.
Residents of the Courtyards at Dublin Ranch Villages, the sleepy community of connected townhouses where McKinsey lived, expressed shock as details of the killing emerged on Sunday.
One neighbor said McKinsey had recently moved out of the home he shared with his wife and three children. Another mentioned that a detective had knocked on her door seeking information on Saturday night. Several described their neighborhood as safe and tight-knit, though one noted that it’s the type of place where people keep to themselves.
A woman who was walking up to McKinsey’s doorstep on Sunday evening characterized herself as a friend of his wife and said she had come to sit with the family. Outside, the street looked calm as people strolled by with children or dogs in tow. Remnants of crime scene tape remained at the empty park about two miles away.
Dublin police said detectives were still investigating and examining evidence to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
Razawi, the witness, said he did not see what led up to the shooting. He said he felt bad for the victim’s family and spent “all night thinking about this.”