Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax kills wife, self in murder-suicide, police say
Former Virginia Democratic Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and his wife, Cerina, were found dead in their Fairfax County home in an apparent murder-suicide, police said Thursday.
“It’s high-profile in nature, it’s tragic in nature, certainly a disgrace to a relatively prominent family that seemed to have a lot going in their favor,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis told reporters at a news conference.
Fairfax, Davis said, shot his wife “multiple times” in the basement of their home just after midnight, before shooting himself with a gun in an upstairs room. One of the couple’s two teenagers alerted the police. The two were in the middle of divorce proceedings, Davis told reporters.
Both men were pronounced dead at the scene when police arrived at their home, “within minutes of the 911 call,” Davis said.
Fairfax, a former federal prosecutor, was elected lieutenant governor in 2017, despite never having held public office before.
But he was embroiled in scandal after several sexual assault allegations surfaced in 2019, while then-Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has fought calls to resign because he previously wore blackface. Fairfax left the state capital in January 2022 and started his own law firm.
