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Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:23:07 -0700 marlon from private IP, post #11508106 /all Virginia Ex-Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax Kills Wife and Self https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/us/virginia-lt-governor-justin-fairfax-murder-wife-suicide.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20260416&instance_id=174168&nl=breaking-news®i_id=70888831&segment_id=218321&user_id=eb5ae5d09d19f5bc7e5216b31800715f Virginia Ex-Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax Kills Wife and Self, Police Say Mr. Fairfax served as lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022. The couple’s teenage children were home, the police said, and one of them called 911. Listen · 7:19 min Share full article Video Virginia Politician Justin Fairfax Kills Wife and Self, According to Police 1:07 Justin Fairfax, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia, fatally shot his wife, Cerina Fairfax, and then killed himself at their home in Annandale, Va., shortly after midnight on Thursday, according to the county police.CreditCredit...Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times By Campbell RobertsonJoAnna Daemmrich and Jacey Fortin JoAnna Daemmrich reported from Annandale, Va. April 16, 2026 See more of our coverage in your search results. Add The New York Times on Google Justin Fairfax was a rising star in Virginia politics before his ascent was derailed by sexual assault allegations in 2019. As the state moved on, few people besides his family and those close to him knew just how much his mental health was unraveling in the aftermath. On Thursday, just after midnight, he fatally shot his wife, Dr. Cerina Fairfax, and then killed himself at their home in Annandale, Va., the police said. The Fairfax County police chief, Kevin Davis, said that the couple’s teenage children were home at the time, and that it was their son who had called 911 to report the shooting. The murder-suicide came as Mr. Fairfax, who was 47, and his wife were in process of divorcing after nearly 20 years of marriage. Court records show that they had separated in 2024 and that Dr. Fairfax had filed for divorce last summer, though they were living in the same house. The deaths cast a pall over the family’s quiet Northern Virginia neighborhood, named Camelot, and shock rippled across the commonwealth, where Mr. Fairfax had been only the second Black person elected to statewide office. Lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022, he had hoped to become the next governor, and sought the Democratic nomination in 2021, But in 2019, early in his term as lieutenant governor, Mr. Fairfax had been accused of sexual assault by two women. He denied the allegations, but he lost the 2021 primary to the former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe and didn’t seek elective office again. Recent court filings described how, since leaving office, Mr. Fairfax had increasingly struggled “with undefined emotional and psychological issues,” as Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Timothy J. McEvoy wrote in a March 30 order. The judge described how Mr. Fairfax had withdrawn from the family, was drinking heavily and was leaving bills unpaid, while Dr. Fairfax, 49, a dentist who ran her own practice, took care of the children. In 2022, Mr. Fairfax bought a gun with money that had been set aside for the children’s horseback lessons, the judge wrote. He disappeared one day with the gun “and some clothes in a suitcase,” only to be found, after a frantic search, in a nearby public park, having “experienced some kind of adverse psychological event.” In January of this year, Chief Davis said, Mr. Fairfax called the police reporting that his wife had assaulted him. When the police came to the house, they looked at footage from cameras that Dr. Fairfax had installed inside the home during the divorce proceedings. “We corroborated that the alleged assault never occurred,” the police chief said on Thursday. While the marriage at times was stormy, Judge McEvoy wrote in his order, “there was no evidence that Mother has been anything other than a port in a storm for her children.” In that order, the judge granted Dr. Fairfax primary physical custody of the children and ordered Mr. Fairfax to move out of the house by the end of April. Early Thursday, two weeks before that deadline, Mr. Fairfax shot his wife in the house’s unfinished basement and then went upstairs to his bedroom, where he shot himself, Chief Davis said. “It’s tragic in nature,” the chief said. In statements on Thursday, many officials took the opportunity to urge people who are suffering from domestic violence to contact the authorities or call the national domestic violence hotline. Mr. Fairfax, a graduate of Columbia Law School, was seen as a potential national figure by friends and associates even before he was elected, at age 38, as Virginia’s lieutenant governor Mr. Fairfax and his family seemed acutely aware of the historical significance of a Black man being elected statewide in Virginia for only the second time in the history of the commonwealth, once the capital of the Confederacy. Just before Mr. Fairfax took office in 2018, his father handed him a piece of paper, according to an interview that Mr. Fairfax gave a local news outlet around that time. “It was the manumission papers for my three-greats-ago grandfather Simon Fairfax in 1798, and he was freed by the ninth Lord Fairfax,” Mr. Fairfax said. “And so, as I raised my right hand to take the oath of office as lieutenant governor of Virginia, I had in my breast pocket the papers that freed my three-greats-ago grandfather.” He served with a relatively low profile alongside Gov. Ralph Northam until the state was rocked by a series of political scandals in 2019 that briefly paralyzed the top levels of its government. First, yearbook photos from Mr. Northam’s time in medical school emerged that appeared to show Mr. Northam wearing blackface. Calls erupted for Mr. Northam’s resignation. Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on social media that Mr. Northam “should resign immediately, Justin Fairfax is the leader Virginia needs now.” But within days, two women accused Mr. Fairfax of sexually assaulting them — one in 2000 at Duke University and another in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention. Mr. Fairfax denied the accusations, but they halted the momentum to push Mr. Northam from office. Adding to the furor, the state attorney general, the third-ranking Virginia Democrat at the time, acknowledged that he had also worn blackface in college. In the end, all three completed their terms in office. ImageMr. Fairfax and his wife stand together at the 2018 inauguration of Virginia’s governor. Mr. Fairfax and his wife, Cerina Fairfax, pictured center at Gov. Ralph Northam’s inauguration in 2018.Credit...Kevin Morley/Associated Press Insisting that he had done nothing wrong, Mr. Fairfax entered the 2021 Democratic primary race for governor. In one televised debate, he accused Mr. McAuliffe, who had called on Mr. Fairfax to resign, of treating him “like Emmett Till, no due process, immediately assumed my guilt.” With little institutional support and paltry fund-raising, Mr. Fairfax came in fourth in the primary, with 3.6 percent of the vote. Mr. McAuliffe won the Democratic nomination but lost the general election to Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. In recent years, Mr. Fairfax had been working as a lawyer in private practice. Court records show that banks had been trying to recover tens of thousands of dollars owed by Mr. Fairfax. On Thursday morning, the Cape Cod-style house was cordoned off from the street by a line of police tape. Two cars were parked in the driveway, one with a sticker that said “Student Driver Please Be Patient.” Neighbors remembered Dr. Fairfax as a D.I.Y. expert who liked to build things herself, including a kitchen island and a playhouse that sat in the backyard alongside an aboveground pool and a chicken coop. “I could see how devoted she was” as a mother, said Erin Baylongo, a 41-year-old mother of four who lives next door. “She created an amazing environment for them.” Peter Demeo, a retired telecommunications consultant who lives three doors down, said that Dr. Fairfax was quieter than her affable and extroverted husband. Some people in the neighborhood were aware of the marital strife, he said, but they didn’t talk much about it. He was startled when he looked out the window at around 7 a.m. and saw all the police cars, then astonished when he discovered the reason. Thu, 16 Apr 2026 23:15:22 -0700 zerosugar from private IP Reply #11536195 I saw this story. Extremely chilling that somebody can go from being a lt. governor to some murder/suicide. Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:16:20 -0700 whiteguyinchina from private IP Reply #10046023 Mam, that is a sad story. Kids will have a rough time moving forward. God bless.Replies require login.