Local man convicted of killing pregnant woman, unborn child
A jury found Isaac Smith guilty of two counts of first-degree murder.
By JUSTIN VELLUCCI
TribLive
A McKeesport man is headed to prison for life in the 2021 killing of a woman he’d been seeing — and her unborn child.
Jurors on Friday afternoon deliberated for just two hours before they found Isaac Christopher Smith, 30, guilty on two counts of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Karli Short.
Short, 26, the daughter of former Penn State University standout and NFL linebacker Brandon Short, was shot once in the head in a yard off a McKeesport alley in the early morning hours of Sept. 13, 2021. A neighbor found her later in the backyard of a McKeesport house.
She was five months pregnant.
“We’re disappointed — and we’re going to look at this case and see where we go next,” attorney Thomas N. Farrell, who represented Smith with attorney Lisle Weaver, told TribLive after the verdict came in. “We all accept the verdict. But we’re disappointed.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, were pleased with the outcome.
“We are thankful to bring some measure of justice to Karli and all her family,” said First Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Spangler.
The verdict capped a weekslong trial in a Downtown Pittsburgh courtroom that occasionally turned dramatic during eight days of testimony.
Last week, prosecutors played a video recording that showed Smith’s interview at Allegheny County Police headquarters just hours after Short’s body had been found.
Smith, then 25, had voluntarily arrived at the department’s Green Tree headquarters and denied involvement in Short’s death.
He told investigators he and Short had been intimate, that she was pregnant, and she suspected the baby was his.
Smith said he came to police in 2021 to clear his name. He also told investigators that he and Short had been together three times, but that they were not in a relationship.
He said he didn’t tell his girlfriend about Short’s pregnancy.
“We totally believed he was telling the truth,” Detective Mark Restori testified on May 20.
But police charged him several weeks later.
The jury convicted Smith in the two deaths. Pennsylvania law requires Smith receive two life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Kevin G. Sasinoski will sentence Smith at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, court records show.
Prosecutors in their opening statements last week pointed out a detail Smith didn’t know in 2021. The baby was not his.
They told jurors that Smith killed Short because he feared that news he had potentially gotten her pregnant would upend his life, including the relationship he had with a long-term girlfriend who had met his parents just the day before.
Prosecutors also cited evidence. Smith’s burner phone was the last one to call Short just minutes before she was shot, they said.
The revolver he bought six weeks before Short was killed — and pawned two weeks after — was the murder weapon, according to Deputy District Attorney Ryan Kiray.
The defendant, Kiray said in court, purported to be a straitlaced young man, even though he was dating several other women at the same time.
“He did not want the double life he was living to be exposed,” Kiray said.
Kiray called it “clear motive.”
Farrell, though, pushed back.
The defense attorney said Smith was adopted, and given his background, he cherished life, including that of unborn children. Farrell also noted that Smith had used a condom when he was with Short, and he believed the child was not his.
“There’s no motive here,” Farrell said.
Repeatedly, the defense continued, when Smith was interviewed by homicide detectives, he said, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.”
Farrell urged the jury to keep an open mind and look for holes in the investigation.
“They focused on him, and that’s all.”
The district attorney’s office originally sought the death penalty in Short’s murder. Prosecutors last year, however, changed their minds and rescinded notice of that potential punishment.
