Former Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax Kills Wife, Self in Horrific Murder-Suicide, Police Say

Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax killed his wife and then himself in a murder-suicide at his home early Thursday, local police have confirmed.

Authorities said Fairfax gunned down his wife before turning the weapon on himself during a press conference on Thursday morning.

“This seems to be an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding a complicated or messy divorce,” Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis told reporters outside the home.

Davis said Fairfax was served “some paperwork” related to an “upcoming court proceeding” that led to the incident. Both the couple’s teenage children were present in the home at the time of the killings, one of them was the 911 caller.

Fairfax, Davis revealed, shot his wife “several times” in the basement and “ran” to the property’s primary bedroom and “then killed himself with the same firearm.”

Davis said that police had been called to the home in recent months after Fairfax alleged that his wife had assaulted him. He added that cameras set up throughout the property by the former lieutenant governor at some point during divorce proceedings confirmed that the assault did not take place.

New footage from those same cameras, he said, corroborated what Fairfax’s son told him about Thursday’s incident.

Officers from the Fairfax County Police Department were called shortly after midnight to a residence on Guinevere Drive in Annandale, where they discovered a man and a woman dead inside. The home belonged to Fairfax and his wife, Cerina.

Responding officers found the woman unconscious and bleeding, later determining she had been shot. A search for the suspect followed, with police deploying canine units and a helicopter before locating a man dead inside the home with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm was recovered at the scene.

Both Fairfax and his wife were pronounced dead shortly after officers arrived.

Detectives are continuing interviews as part of the ongoing investigation.

Fairfax, the former Democratic lieutenant governor, served under former Governor Ralph Northam and faced public accusations from two women in 2019, who alleged he sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in 2000 and 2004.

He consistently denied wrongdoing and resisted calls to resign, maintaining that both encounters were consensual.

Fairfax later mounted an unsuccessful bid for governor in 2021.

Watch above via WUSA9.

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