White/Caucasian, female, age 65, Patrice “Patti” Layou died on October 10, 2021, in Anchorage, Alaska. In the early hours that Sunday, residents near East 46th Avenue and Folker Street reported gunfire around 3 a.m. Officers arrived and found Patrice “Patti” Layou, age 65, lying dead near her vehicle by the intersection in the city's U-Med/Campbell Park area. Initial police statements described the case as a homicide and established the location and timing of the shooting.
Investigators quickly focused on a family member. Later that day, or within hours of the discovery, officers located 38-year-old Thomas Layou in an apartment a short distance from the scene and detained him as the investigation unfolded. Charging documents and subsequent reporting recount that the sound of multiple gunshots drew police to the area, and that the victim was found near her Subaru, anchoring the scene details that would later appear in court records.
On October 21, 2021, an Anchorage grand jury indicted Thomas Layou on one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in connection with the killing of Patrice “Patti” Layou, age 65. Authorities announced that, if convicted, the defendant faced a potential sentence of up to 99 years' imprisonment on the murder charges. He was arraigned on the charges and held on $200,000 bail with a requirement for a court-approved third-party custodian.
Contemporaneous accounts referenced prior interactions with authorities and mental-health evaluations in the days leading up to the shooting. Reporting based on charging documents stated that Thomas Layou, 38, had been detained and evaluated at the state psychiatric hospital roughly a week earlier and was later released; those documents also described recent conflict between him and his mother. These details were presented by news outlets summarizing the allegations rather than adjudicated findings.
Beyond the criminal case filings, obituaries and memorial posts marked the passing of Patrice “Patti” Layou, age 65, noting her long ties to Anchorage and her decades of service with the Anchorage School District. Those remembrances fix her date of death as October 10, 2021, and place her life in the community where the shooting occurred.
