Summer Sopko and Chris D'Emilio first met in high school in Westmoreland County. She was a freshman at Penn-Trafford. He was a senior. She was a diver. He played football. Their on-and-off relationship over the years through high school and college ended Thursday in a murder-suicide in a downtown Pittsburgh hotel room. The Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said both died of gunshot wounds to the head. Authorities said D'Emilio shot Sopko, 24, then himself. Their deaths left people who knew them wondering Friday how such promising lives could end so violently. D'Emilio, 27, had checked into the Marriott City Center Thursday afternoon. According to Pittsburgh police, D'Emilio asked a valet to retrieve his 2001 Cadillac. He left the building, went back to his 15th-floor room and never returned to his car. The car eventually was towed. Inside the car, police found a wine bottle, some takeout food and financial information. Friends of D'Emilio said he had seemed withdrawn in recent weeks and had told them he was suffering from a brain tumor. But a spokeswoman for the medical examiner said the autopsy uncovered no evidence of a tumor. Mark Martini, of Penn Township, was Sopko's diving coach in high school and was an assistant football coach at Penn-Trafford when D'Emilio played in the late 1990s. Sopko, a Penn State graduate, was a substitute teacher in the Gateway School District; D'Emilio was a pharmaceutical salesman for a drug company. Both were hardworking, talented athletes, Martini said. Martini said Sopko had qualified for the PIAA diving championships four consecutive years in high school. She finished 13th as a freshman. Twice, she finished in sixth place in the state championships, and she took seventh place her senior year. She trained with divers at the University of Pittsburgh to improve her performance and accumulated more points than any other diver in the school's history, Martini said. Sopko consistently made the honor roll in high school and the dean's list at Penn State. Martini said he last saw Sopko in May when she was walking her dog around the high school track. "She was a great kid, a hard worker, a good student," said a somber Martini. "She was very bright, very happy. "I'm saddened for their family. They're good people," he said. Her father, Jerry, is the retired director of the Westmoreland County Children's Bureau. He declined a request for an interview. A woman answering the phone at the home of Louis and Nancy D'Emilio said the family had no comment. Harry Smith, the assistant superintendent of the Penn-Trafford School District, recalled seeing the couple last week in a Harrison City video store and stopped to talk to them. Smith described Sopko as outstanding, both as a diver and a person. "She was a joy to be around." He remembered the 6-foot-4, 220-pound D'Emilio as an aggressive football player who was hard-hitting as a linebacker and tight end. His classmates voted him "most unforgettable." He played on the 1997 football team that went to the WPIAL championship at Three Rivers Stadium. In the semifinal game in Pittsburgh against Fox Chapel, which Penn-Trafford won 21-19, Fox Chapel scored a touchdown with 35 seconds left in the game. As they tried for a two-point conversion that would have tied the game, D'Emilio pressured the Fox Chapel quarterback, who threw an incomplete pass, clinching the game for Penn-Trafford. Penn-Trafford lost the title game the following week to Upper St. Clair, 28-27. Martini said D'Emilio didn't play football until his junior year but was so athletic that he received a scholarship in 1998 to West Virginia University. An injury ended his college football career, Martini said, and D'Emilio transferred to another school. "I don't understand things like this," Smith said. "My own personal reaction is one of heart-sickening loss when you have people like them who were looked up to in this school. "We try to prepare students for life. You start questioning yourself, wondering if there was something we missed," he said. "This is one of the sadder things that you have no answer for."

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