Lois M. Kennedy Sima, a 57-year-old female was killed on July 21, 1980, in Coraopolis, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. She died during a sudden sniper attack that unfolded on a residential block in the early evening. Contemporary reports identify her as one of four neighbors fatally shot; she was sitting on her front porch when she was struck. Her husband, Joseph Sima, then 63, was wounded in the arm but survived.
The other people killed that night were Joseph Andrew Olinger, 70; Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser, 59; and Andrew Price, 25.
According to police and court records, the shootings were carried out from an attic window of a nearby home using a high-powered rifle and a pistol. The barrage lasted for roughly an hour and began at approximately 6:20 p.m., terrorizing the tree-lined street amid extreme heat. Coraopolis Police Chief Howard White told reporters at the time that the assailant was someone the department knew and that there had been no prior trouble with him.
The suspect, 23-year-old Victor Belmonte Jr., an Army reservist and the son of a local councilman, became the focus of the investigation almost immediately. After the gunfire stopped, Belmonte left the house, drove aimlessly for about an hour, and then walked into the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Carnegie around 7:15 p.m., calmly stating he had just shot several people. He was arrested without incident, advised of his rights, and charged with four counts of criminal homicide. He was held without bail pending a preliminary hearing later that month.
At trial, Belmonte did not dispute that he fired the shots but pursued an insanity defense, claiming he believed he was repelling an “enemy attack.” A jury rejected that claim. On November 22, 1982, he was convicted of four counts of third-degree murder. The court imposed two consecutive terms of 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment, to run concurrently with two additional 10 to 20 year terms—an aggregate sentence of 20 to 40 years. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the judgment on appeal in 1985, recounting in detail how Belmonte moved to the third floor of his father’s house, fired into the neighborhood, abandoned the weapons by the front door, and then surrendered to state police.
Public memorial and genealogy records corroborate the basic biographical details of the victim. Lois M. Sima, a 57-year-old female is recorded as having died on July 21, 1980, with burial in Coraopolis Cemetery, and is listed among the four victims of the Coraopolis sniper attack remembered by gun-violence memorial projects.
