(CNN) - A top Virginia politician lay in a Charlottesville hospital with multiple stab wounds Tuesday evening after what state police called a fight with his son, who appears to have killed himself shortly afterward.

A cousin found state Sen. Creigh Deeds, the 2009 Democratic nominee for governor, walking down a road near his home Tuesday morning, bleeding from multiple stab wounds to his head and chest, state police reported. State troopers who came to Deeds' home in Millboro, about 150 miles west of Richmond, then found 24-year-old Austin "Gus" Deeds with a gunshot wound, Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. The troopers were unable to save him.