Annandale, Virginia: Former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax, who served as the state’s 41st lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022 under Governor Ralph Northam, was found dead Thursday along with a woman at a residence in the 8100 block of Guinevere Drive in Annandale, according to the Fairfax County Police Department.
Officers responded to the home shortly after midnight. When they arrived, they found a man and a woman dead inside the residence.
“Preliminarily, it appears that the adult male shot the adult female before shooting himself in a domestic related incident,” Fairfax County Police Captain Chris Cosgriff said at a briefing Thursday morning.
Police withheld the victims’ names pending notification of next of kin at the time of Cosgriff’s briefing. Fox News subsequently reported the male victim as former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. Multiple Virginia-area outlets confirmed his identity by mid-morning April 16.
The identity of the female victim had not been officially confirmed by Fairfax County Police as of the time of publication. Secondary reporting from the National Zero, citing police dispatch records and publicly known address information, identified the woman as Fairfax’s wife. A divorce filing was reported to be pending.
Fairfax, who was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before relocating to the Northern Virginia area, served as a Duke University and Columbia Law School graduate and was a former federal prosecutor before entering elected office. He won the lieutenant governorship in 2017, becoming only the second Black statewide elected official in Virginia history at that time. He went on to seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2021 but did not advance out of the primary.
During his tenure as lieutenant governor, Fairfax faced accusations of sexual assault from two women, allegations he consistently and forcefully denied. He was never charged criminally in connection with those allegations. His former law firm conducted an independent investigation that found no evidence of misconduct during his time as an employee.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For domestic violence support, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
