There’s no good or delicate way to pass along such awful news, so forgive my straight-forward reportage on this: Jérôme Girardot, a respected pastry chef for the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the West End, was found dead on Monday in Ben Brenman Park in Cameron Station, just weeks after an earlier tragedy in the same neighborhood.

The state medical examiner in Fairfax has ruled the 32-year-old Girardot’s death a suicide.

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It’s natural to want to understand why someone like James Downs,  co-owner of the beloved Cameron Perks coffee shop in the Alexandria community of Cameron Station, shot his business partner and girlfriend, Dominique Dunford, before turning the gun on himself last week. But I think it’s premature to blame the whole tragic incident on the economy. A man who would kill himself, shoot his loved one in the back (twice), and have a 12-hour stand-off with police has to have deeper troubles.

John Arundel, writing for LocalKicks, has pubished a nice narrative of Downs and Dunford’s brief time as owners of Cameron Perks. Arundel quotes a number of sources, including Alexandria police, who label the incident a “domestic dispute,” which says absolutely nothing, of course. Arundel tried to fill in the holes by talking to friends and neighbors:

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