A New York Times executive was shot and killed in a Northern California parking lot, and police have arrested his wife's elderly parents on suspicion of murder.
Jonathan McKinsey, 40, the newspaper's director of engineering for games player experience, was found with multiple gunshot wounds outside the Dublin Sports Grounds on Saturday afternoon, according to police in Dublin, about 35 miles east of San Francisco.
Shouyong Zhang and Shili Chen, both 77, face multiple charges including first-degree murder. The couple is due in court Wednesday to formally face the charges. It was not immediately clear whether they have a lawyer.
The New York Times confirmed McKinsey's death. He oversaw engineering for the company's games division, which produces puzzles and the hit word game Wordle.
Witnesses described a burst of gunfire followed by a man collapsing to the pavement.
"I saw the guy drop to the floor: head bloody and chest bloody," witness Assad Razawi told KGO-TV in San Francisco.
Razawi's daughter said her father watched the couple "walking together and then casually walk away from the shooting."
An officer passing the scene arrested the pair minutes later. They had stayed in the area after the attack, a witness said.
Police have not released a possible motive. The relationship between McKinsey and the suspects — his parents-in-law — places the killing inside his own family, a detail that has drawn national attention to the quiet Bay Area suburb.
Dublin, a city of roughly 70,000 in Alameda County, recorded no homicides in 2025, according to state data, making Saturday's killing a rare act of violent crime there.
McKinsey worked at the Times for several years and was based in California, according to his LinkedIn profile. The games unit he helped run has become a significant driver of subscriber engagement for the paper, with Wordle alone drawing millions of daily players since the Times acquired it in 2022.
The Times said in a statement that it was devastated by the loss of a colleague. The company did not release further details.
Alameda County prosecutors are expected to file formal charges before Wednesday's hearing. Bail information was not immediately available.
Detectives have asked anyone who witnessed the shooting or has video from the area to contact Dublin police.
