Teacher charged with murder in wife’s stabbing death in West Hills
Los Angeles County prosecutors charged an elementary school teacher Wednesday with one count of murder in his wife’s stabbing death, the district attorney’s office said.
The district attorney also charged Michael Rodney Kane, 46, with one count of first-degree burglary with a person present, one count of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of making criminal threats.
Kane was scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon in the Van Nuys branch of Los Angeles County Superior Court.
Kane was arrested in Yucca Valley early Monday morning after Michelle Ann Kane’s stabbing death on a quiet San Fernando Valley street touched off a manhunt for her estranged husband.
Michelle Kane, 43, had told police Friday that her husband had violated a temporary restraining order and that she suspected he was the one who broke out windows in their home, where she still lived with her two young children.
She and her daughter, 6, and son, 2, took refuge in the home of friends in West Hills, but police said Michael Kane found her there shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday and pushed his way inside. When his estranged wife ran outside, police said, he chased her down and stabbed her multiple times before fleeing in his car.
In earlier court documents seeking the restraining order, Michelle Kane said her estranged husband, from whom she had filed for divorce in December, had made numerous death threats against her and had harassed her and her children. She said he was abusing drugs and alcohol and last year was briefly hospitalized after expressing suicidal thoughts.
Prosecutors said they will ask that Kane be held without bail.
Kane is employed as a teacher at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Nestle Avenue Charter Elementary School in Tarzana.
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