Portsmouth, Ohio - Two weeks after Christi Layne filed for divorce, William Michael Layne proved to the world that Christi was right all along – he really was a rat bastard. Thursday morning he stabbed Stephanie Loop, 22, at her home. Then he charged into Christi’s fifth-grade classroom and stabbed and shot his wife as her young students watched. After that, he went home and shot himself in a standoff with police.

A neighbor said Mike Layne, 56, “snapped” after the couple separated in SeptemberSeptember reviews after 34 years of marriage and began acting erratically. Layne, a Portsmouth city employee who took disability retirement, generally was a “good guy who didn’t bother anybody.” Except his wife and son EricEric reviews.

Christi Layne, 53, reported to police that Mike Layne telephoned her the night of Dec. 26. He told her to tell their son, Eric, “that he will see him in hell and it will be sooner than he thinks.” An hour later he called her again and left a voice message. “He said what he said for Eric was for me, too. He said I better enjoy myself because it will be soon,” Mrs. Layne wrote. Those threats earned Mike a domestic threat charge, and Christi got a restraining order. She filed for divorce on January 23. A neighbor in her apartment said that Christi Layne was very afraid of her husband and installed security measures in her apartment before she even moved in.

At 9:12 a.m. Thursday, police responded to a stabbing. A witness says that Mike Layne came out of nowhere and began stabbing Stephanie Loop. Loop had been at Michael Layne’s house Wednesday evening, but called and asked a friend to pick her up.
Loop had on a coat that partly shielded her from the attack. She had a stab wound to the right chest and behind her left shoulder. Thursday night, Loop was described by a hospital as “alert and breathing on her own”, although her condition remains critical.

Within four minutes of stabbing Loop, Layne entered Notre Dame Elementary school. He went into his wife’s classroom, knife at the ready. In front the students Layne stabbed his estranged wife at least 13 times in the upper body and once in the leg. A shot glanced off her left cheek, but did not penetrate the bone. A second shot missed.

11 year-old Emmaly Baker told a news source that she was in the coat room hiding with some other kids. “We heard gunshots and we heard her screaming…it was really bloody… when we went into the computer room, she wasn’t talking then.” A source says that Layne’s internal bleeding has been stopped and she came through surgery well. Christi Layne is listed in critical but stable condition.

Police officers went to Mike Layne’s home after the attacks, where they were met with gunfire. After a four hour standoff, officers found Layne’s body in his detached garage, where Layne had shot himself in the head with a shotgun. It was the only good move Mike made all day.

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