A couple accused of shooting their son-in-law in a Bay Area park were both charged on Wednesday with murder and related crimes.
Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, were arrested on Saturday after their son-in-law, 40-year-old Jonathan McKinsey, was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in the parking lot of a park in Dublin, Calif., about 35 miles east of downtown San Francisco.
The murder charges include a special circumstance of “lying in wait,” indicating that prosecutors say that Mr. Zhang and Ms. Chen planned the killing and waited for the moment to act. If convicted of that special circumstance, they would face a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Mr. Zhang and Ms. Chen live in Dublin and are the parents of Mr. McKinsey’s wife, with whom he had three young children. Mr. McKinsey was director of engineering for the games department of The New York Times.
No motive was described by the police for the shooting, but Mr. McKinsey and his wife had a turbulent marriage and were living separately, records show. Each had filed requests for domestic violence restraining orders against the other last year in Alameda County. Mr. McKinsey had also pleaded not guilty last year to two charges of misdemeanor child abuse.
Mr. McKinsey was a transgender man and accused his wife, Candice Jang, and his in-laws of abusing him because of his identity, according to his filing for a restraining order in December 2025. Ms. Jang filed for her own restraining order against Mr. McKinsey, accusing him of abusing her and the children.
On Saturday afternoon, a Dublin police sergeant was driving by the park when he saw a man lying on the ground and stopped to investigate, the local police said. Emergency personnel began arriving after receiving 911 calls from people in the park about the shooting.
Witnesses directed officers to a black Honda Civic that was driving away, according to the probable cause declaration released by the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. The police stopped the car and arrested two people, whom they identified as Mr. Zhang and Ms. Chen.
Ms. Chen, who was driving, was found with a firearm in her possession. A second firearm was also found in the car, which Mr. Zhang later admitted to using to shoot Mr. McKinsey, the district attorney’s office said. The couple are being held without the possibility of bail.
The district attorney’s office said that surveillance video showed Ms. Chen and Mr. Zhang shooting Mr. McKinsey “in concert.” It noted that the shooting had occurred in a crowded parking lot where several children were present.
Andrea Mah, a lawyer for Mr. McKinsey, said she was deeply saddened by her client’s death.
“This is a true tragedy, particularly for the three children now left without a father,” she said. “I trust that our justice system will hold those responsible for Mr. McKinsey’s senseless death accountable.”
Mr. McKinsey and Ms. Jang, who had been married since 2011, were in a long legal battle over their marriage, finances and custody of their children. In December 2025, Mr. McKinsey initiated divorce proceedings.
Mr. McKinsey said in a December court filing, in which he requested a restraining order against Ms. Jang, that his wife had abused him for years and allowed his in-laws to abuse him as well.
He said that in 2023, his mother-in-law called him and one of his sons a “pervert” and a “monster” after the boy wanted to try on his sister’s dresses, and that afterward, his wife had refused his request to find outside child care so they would not have to rely on her mother. He also accused his father-in-law of punching him in the chest while he was recovering from double mastectomy surgery in 2010. And he said that Ms. Jang forcefully tried to pull out one of the drainage tubes from the surgery when they got in an argument.
In October 2025, Ms. Jang filed for a restraining order against Mr. McKinsey. She, too, described a pattern of abuse. She said that Mr. McKinsey had grabbed her by the forearms during one argument and dropped her onto the corner of a table, fracturing her spine. Ms. Jang also accused Mr. McKinsey of emotionally abusing her mother. And she said that her mother had witnessed an argument in 2019 during which Mr. McKinsey grabbed her forearm so hard that it left fingerprints.
She was granted full custody of the children, and Mr. McKinsey was permitted only supervised visits with them between December and late August.
Starting in late August, the court ordered that Mr. McKinsey could have two unsupervised two-hour visits per week with the three children in public locations, such as playgrounds and libraries. The court ordered that the children would walk from one parent to the other, and that the parents would not speak to each other.
Records show that Mr. Zhang and Ms. Chen lived in Albuquerque, N.M., in the 1990s. Mr. Zhang registered to vote in New Mexico in 2000. Ms. Chen held a massage therapy license in New Mexico through the 2000s until it expired in 2015.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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