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The couple accused of killing their son-in-law at a Dublin sports complex shot him more than a dozen times with two guns bought well in advance, prosecutors have alleged in new court filings.
Shili Chen and Shouyong Zhang remain in custody at Santa Rita Jail after a Nov. 4 bail hearing was continued to December. Attorneys for both suspects filed motions for bail in recent weeks, with Chen’s attorney, Curtis Briggs, saying his client was unaware of her husband’s plan to kill their son-in-law.
The Sept. 26 midday shooting, which authorities have said took place while families and children played nearby, has drawn international attention. McKinsey, a 40-year-old gaming engineer for the New York Times, was embroiled in a bitter divorce with his wife, Candice Jang, which included competing allegations of abuse. Jang accused McKinsey of abusing their children, while McKinsey, who was transgender, alleged that Jang and her parents had abused him and directed anti-LGBTQ+ slurs at one of the couple’s children.
McKinsey and Jang had each obtained restraining orders against the other, court records show.
Chen and Zhang, both 77, were arrested shortly after the shooting. Two firearms were recovered in the rental car the couple was driving when they were arrested, according to police.
Prosecutors allege that the shooting was planned. According to the court fillings, they said Zhang acquired what he called his “big gun” and practiced at a Livermore shooting range for months ahead of the incident, spurred in part by his reported fear of McKinsey amid the contentious divorce proceedings. The couple already owned a “little gun,” which Chen allegedly used to shoot McKinsey.
Zhang believed McKinsey had “set up” three recent incidents in which Zhang had been hit by a driver while riding his bicycle, prosecutors said. Police said they found defaced pictures of McKinsey while they were searching the couple’s home in the days after the shooting.
Briggs called his client’s pre-trial detention at Santa Rita Jail “tantamount to the imposition of the death penalty or a life sentence without due process” in the bail motion filed last month, pointing to a string of deaths at the facility over the past decade and state findings of numerous safety violations.
“The danger to an elderly detainee like Ms. Chen is not hypothetical,” Briggs wrote, pointing to the death of 78-year-old Daniel Lavi last year while in custody. Lavi had been awaiting trial since 2019.
Briggs said Chen was “kept in the dark” about her husband’s alleged plan to shoot McKinsey, which was carried out during McKinsey’s final three-hour custody visit with his children. A hearing on expanded custody rights was scheduled for the week following the shooting.
Zhang allegedly told police that “no one knew what I was going to do.”
While prosecutors pointed to surveillance footage of the shooting as one part of a trove of evidence implicating the couple, Briggs said the video “reinforces” the argument that Chen was not aware of what was happening. He said the video shows that McKinsey fell to the ground a second after being approached by Zhang, who allegedly continued to fire for 10 seconds while McKinsey lay motionless.
Briggs acknowledged that Chen did then shoot at McKinsey as he was on the ground but said she did so in fear of her husband’s safety.
“Ms. Chen did not fire until 23 seconds after Mr. McKinsey fell, already receiving close to a dozen bullet wounds from a .45 caliber gun,” Briggs wrote. “The discovery contains no autopsy report or forensic evidence establishing whether Mr. McKinsey was still alive when she fired, much less that she participated in her husband’s planning.”
He added that the surveillance video shows an axe within arms reach of McKinsey at the time, though it remains unclear if that was a toy.
“This may have been a significant factor in how gunfire erupted in the first place,” Briggs wrote.
Prosecutors contended in their opposition that bail can only be granted to suspects of capital crimes in certain circumstances and that “the court must detain the defendant without bail” when a capital crime is supported by sufficient proof.
Zhang and Chen are set to return to court on Nov. 23 for a pre-trial hearing ahead of the continued Dec. 3 bail hearing.
