Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself in a murder-suicide in their home in Annandale, Virginia, police said Thursday.
Fairfax County police said that just after midnight, Fairfax shot his wife several times in the basement of their home and then went upstairs to the primary bedroom and shot and killed himself.
Both their teenage children were home when the incident occurred. According to two sources with knowledge of the investigation, Fairfax's son called 911 just after midnight from the Fairfaxs' home. The caller said he thought his mother, Cerina Fairfax, had been stabbed. When police arrived at the home, they found bullet casings near her body. Later, they found Justin Fairfax upstairs with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Police said there was no prolonged confrontation before the shooting.
"I think it all kind of happened at once," Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said. "There wasn't a pause … it all happened pretty spontaneously."
Police said that Fairfax and his wife were in the early stages of divorce proceedings, and Fairfax had recently been served paperwork related to that divorce.
"This has been an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce," Davis said during a briefing Thursday morning.
The couple had been living together but were separated, residing in separate bedrooms. Cerina Fairfax filed for divorce last July.
Both of the Fairfaxs' children are teenagers, Davis said, calling the incident "traumatic" for them. He said victims' services are working with them and other family members.
"This is certainly a fall from grace for a relatively high-profile family that seemingly had a lot of things going for them," Davis said. "Tragic for the children to lose both parents. Extra tragic for them to actually be in the home when it occurred."
In January, Fairfax called police alleging his wife assaulted him, although police determined at the time that the assault never occurred, based on footage from cameras at the home that had been placed by Cerina Fairfax.
Justin Fairfax served as the 41st lieutenant governor of Virginia, serving from 2018 until 2022. In 2019, a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2004, and another woman accused him of raping her when they were both college students. He said both encounters were consensual.
Justin and Cerina Fairfax met at Duke University.
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