Crime scene tape is seen on a fence at the Dublin Sports Ground in Dublin. Authorities found Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old Dublin resident and New York Times employee, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in the parking lot of the sports complex. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Court records show that McKinsey was involved in a bitter divorce that included allegations of dueling abuse.
Less than a year before an East Bay couple was charged with killing their son-in-law by taking turns shooting him in a busy Bay Area park, the victim told a court that the alleged killers mistreated him because he was a transgender man, records show.
Jonathan McKinsey, a 40-year-old director of video game engineering at The New York Times, filed for a restraining order against his wife last December, alleging that Candice Jang physically and emotionally harmed him and their three children for years and enabled her mother and father, Shili Chen and Shouyong Zhang, to do the same.
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Authorities have not discussed a motive for last Saturday’s killing in Dublin, but court records paint a picture of a family mired in more than a decade of chaos and a 14-year marriage that collapsed after years of conflict.
At the time of his death, McKinsey was involved in an acrimonious divorce from Jang that involved allegations of domestic violence and child abuse and opposition to requests for a restraining order, as well as disputes over issues of child support and custody.
The divorce appeared to intensify in recent months as the couple fought for custody. Jang had full custody of their three children, but in late August, McKinsey was granted unsupervised public visits twice a week.
A restraining order against McKinsey remained in effect until December, with a three-day hearing scheduled for that month. The next hearing in the divorce case was set for this Friday.
In one alleged incident involving McKinsey’s in-laws, Chen called her grandson a “monster,” a “disgusting faggot” and a “pervert” when he wanted to wear his sister’s dresses years ago, McKinsey wrote in the restraining order request. Chen allegedly hit the child in the back of the head and called his father the same names, accusing McKinsey and ordering him to leave his own home.
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After McKinsey underwent a gender-confirming double mastectomy more than a decade ago, his stepfather punched him in the chest while he was recovering from the surgery, McKinsey said in court documents.
These incidents were part of a series of allegations made by McKinsey against Jang and his parents. McKinsey said his wife was jealous, controlling and “capable of inflicting serious physical harm.”
“I am desperately afraid of what Candice will do to get back at me, as she has done with her previous romantic partners,” McKinsey wrote as he sought a restraining order and divorce.
Nine months later, his parents are behind bars in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, as Alameda County prosecutors consider what charges to bring in the case.
Zhang and Chen, both 76, shot McKinsey around 3 p.m. Saturday in a parking lot at the Dublin Sports Grounds, a popular park in the middle of the city, according to Dublin police. Witnesses said the couple calmly walked away from the scene as McKinsey fell to the ground, fatally injured, in the parking lot.
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Police said they arrested Chen and Zhang minutes after passersby reported them.
Jang could not be reached for comment and her divorce attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the abuse allegations against her client. Jang has not been named as a suspect or charged in connection with her husband’s death.
Andrea Mah, a lawyer who represented McKinsey in the divorce, said she was deeply saddened by his death. The divorce was a “complicated matter,” Mah said in a statement.
“It’s a real tragedy, especially for the three children now without a father,” she said. “I am confident that our justice system will hold those responsible for Mr. McKinsey’s senseless death accountable.”
Jang filed for a restraining order against McKinsey in October 2025, alleging that he physically and emotionally abused her and their children for more than a decade. During Christmas break two years ago, Jang wrote, McKinsey hit their 6-year-old son “at least 4 to 5 times” and called him a “dick” and an “asshole.”
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In another alleged incident, Jang said McKinsey hit their son in the face with an open hand, leaving a red mark that Jang treated with ice.
McKinsey was arrested and charged last fall with two counts of child abuse in connection with the allegation that he slapped his son. He pleaded not guilty and was required to take about a dozen parenting classes, records show.
However, two months later, McKinsey filed for a restraining order against Jang, alleging that she was the abusive wife in their relationship and detailing incidents of violence, jealousy and controlling behavior.
McKinsey claimed that Jang, a stay-at-home mother, failed to meet their children’s basic needs and regularly yelled at and degraded them. She often didn’t feed the children, now ages 3, 5 and 7, until after noon and sometimes left them home alone when she went to practice or run errands.
Jang installed a lock at the top of her daughter’s door “to prevent her from leaving her room when she leaves her at home unsupervised,” McKinsey alleged in court documents.
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When officers went to the family’s home after Jang accused her husband of slapping their child, they found a 2-year-old unsupervised in an upstairs bedroom, according to a law enforcement statement filed in the criminal case.
McKinsey said in later court filings that it was working at the time and did not know the child had been left home alone, something it said it repeatedly asked Jang to stop doing.
“I firmly believe she did this on purpose, to trap me,” he wrote.
In a response filed in court, Jang said the allegations made by McKinsey against her were false.
The abuses that McKinsey and Jang accuse each other of go back more than a decade.
In an abuse diary that Jang said she kept for personal therapy sessions, she said McKinsey verbally and emotionally abused her during an hours-long fight one night in 2020, allegedly telling her, “I hope you die. I hate you so much.”
Jang said McKinsey pushed their son, causing him to fall and injure himself several times over the past five years. She said he once hit their daughter in the forehead because she was crying.
In court documents, McKinsey countered with its own allegations of domestic violence, saying Jang hit him in the head with a frying pan in 2013 and threatened to keep hitting him until he ate a dead cockroach she found on the floor.
In 2010, the year before the couple married, Jang told McKinsey to kill himself because he was “fucked up and transgender,” McKinsey said.
That same year, Jang accused McKinsey of grabbing her forearms during an argument and dropping her into the corner of a coffee table, fracturing her upper vertebra. When she tried to end their relationship in 2009 and 2010, Jang said, he made two attempts to end his life that required his institutionalization.
McKinsey wrote in his court filing that he was afraid to seek a restraining order and divorce against his wife and that he was worried about the safety of his children in her care.
“I sincerely believe that she would hurt them, if not kill them, if she believed it was possible for me to have the children in my care or custody,” he wrote.
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