Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Wife Die in Apparent Murder-Suicide

Annandale, Va. — Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, 47, shot and killed his wife, Dr. Cerina W. Fairfax, before turning the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide early Thursday morning, April 16, 2026, according to Fairfax County Police.

Police responded to the couple’s home on Guinevere Drive in Annandale just after midnight after their teenage son called 911. Officers found Fairfax and his wife, a dentist, dead inside the residence. According to Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis, preliminary findings indicate that Fairfax shot his wife multiple times in an unfinished basement before running upstairs to the primary bedroom and fatally shooting himself.

The couple’s two teenage children — a son and a daughter — were home at the time of the incident but were not injured. They have since been placed with their grandparents.

Authorities described the deaths as the result of a domestic incident. Police noted that Fairfax and his wife of 19 years had been going through a contentious divorce, and he had recently been served with court paperwork related to the proceedings.

Fairfax, a Democrat, served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022. He was the first African American elected to statewide office in Virginia since the Reconstruction era and had previously run for attorney general and governor. He faced sexual assault allegations in 2019, which he denied, but was not charged.

No further details on motive have been released. The investigation remains ongoing.