Justin Fairfax, a former lieutenant governor of Virginia whose tenure was upended by allegations of sexual assault, shot and killed his wife Cerina Fairfax on Thursday before killing himself, police said.

Kevin Davis, the chief of the Fairfax county police department in Virginia, said at a press conference that the murder-suicide took place in the context of “an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce”. The shooting took place at the Fairfaxes residence in Annandale, Virginia, and police arrived on the scene after receiving a 911 call from one of their teenage children shortly after midnight.

“Former lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife inside of their home and then shot and killed himself,” Davis said.

A Democratic lieutenant governor who served from 2018 to 2022 under Governor Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax, 47, was the second African American to hold statewide office in Virginia since Reconstruction and considered a rising star in the state’s politics.