Police say the couple’s teenage children called 911 after a domestic dispute at their Annandale home during divorce

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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.