Montanzima Banks was six years old when she was murdered in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 1982. She was one of five children killed inside a home at 28 Schoolhouse Lane during a mass shooting that left thirteen people dead across two locations that morning.

The shooter, George Emil Banks, a 40-year-old prison guard, allegedly began the rampage at the Schoolhouse Lane residence after drinking and taking prescription drugs. Dressed in military fatigues and armed with a Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, he is reported to have shot eight people inside that house, then killed additional victims later at a mobile home park in Jenkins Township and a man on the street. Banks was charged with thirteen counts of murder among other offenses; in June 1983 a jury convicted him of multiple counts including first-degree murder.

Key unresolved questions remain about the victims remembered only by name and age in historical accounts and about the long legal struggle over Banks’s competency and sentences that followed. If anyone knew Montanzima or has information about her life or the events that morning, please share what can help her memory be better understood.