Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser, a 59-year-old woman, was shot and killed on July 21, 1980, during a sniper attack on a residential street in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. According to contemporaneous reports and later court records, a gunman opened fire from the upper floors of a house onto neighbors outside, killing four people and wounding a fifth. The victims killed that day included 59-year-old female Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser, Joseph Andrew Olinger Andrew Price and Lois M.
Kennedy Sima. Public sources that memorialize the incident consistently record the date and place of death for the 59-year-old female victim, Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser; her ethnicity is not specified in the records available.
Investigators identified the shooter as 23-year-old Victor Belmonte Jr., who left the scene and later surrendered at the Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Carnegie the same evening. He was arraigned the next day on four counts of criminal homicide and related charges. At trial in 1981, the defense advanced a temporary-insanity theory; testimony described Belmonte retrieving multiple firearms, including a. 35-caliber Marlin rifle, and firing from a third-floor vantage point at people on the street below. The 59-year-old female victim, Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser, was among those fatally struck in the barrage; again, her ethnicity is not reported in the public sources consulted.
A jury ultimately rejected the insanity defense. In 1982, Victor Belmonte Jr. was convicted on four counts of third-degree murder and, on November 22, 1982, was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in state prison. Pennsylvania appellate courts later affirmed the judgment of sentence. These outcomes confirm that an arrest was made and that the identified suspect—Victor Belmonte Jr.—was prosecuted and convicted for the killings that included the death of 59-year-old female victim Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser; no alternative suspects have been identified in the record.
Memorial and archival listings continue to note the Coraopolis shooting of July 21, 1980, and name the four people killed, including 59-year-old female Dorothy Louise “Birdy” Glaser. These sources also place the incident within a small cluster of gun homicides recorded in Allegheny County on that date.
