Justin Fairfax, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, and his wife, Cerina Fairfax, were found dead in their Annandale home on Thursday morning in what is being investigated as a murder-suicide, the Fairfax County Police confirmed on Thursday.
Fairfax, once a rising star in Virginia Democratic politics, was a former federal prosecutor who was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2017. In 2019, he was accused of sexual assault at the same time Virginia’s then-Gov.Ralph Northam faced calls to resign over his past use of blackface. Fairfax denied the allegations. He ran for governor of Virginia in 2021, but came fourth in the Democratic primary.
Fairfax left the lieutenant governor’s office in 2022 to begin his own law firm.
“It’s high-profile in nature, it’s tragic in nature, certainly a fall from grace for a relatively high-profile family that seemingly had a lot of things going in their favor,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said at a press conference.
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Shortly after midnight on Thursday morning, the Fairfax County Police Department responded to a 911 call from the Fairfax’s Annandale home, where Davis said Fairfax appeared to have “shot and killed his wife inside of their home and then shot and killed himself.”
Both were found dead at the scene, Davis said.
Both of Fairfax’s teenage children were in the home when the shooting occurred, according to the police chief, adding that Fairfax’s son called 911.
Davis told reporters on Thursday that the couple was in an ongoing dispute over divorce proceedings, in which the former lieutenant governor had recently been served paperwork. Davis said that Fairfax’s wife had set up cameras inside the home, and he believed they were on at the time of the shootings.
Fairfax called 911 in January, alleging that his wife had assaulted him, but Davis said police were able to determine the allegation was false after watching video from the home.
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