Background: A section of Furnace Alley in McKeesport, Pennsylvania (Google Maps). Inset left: Karli Short (Robert A. Waters Funeral Home, Inc.). Inset right: Isaac Smith (Allegheny County Jail).
A Pennsylvania man who allegedly gunned down his lover when he believed she was carrying his child, which could ruin his new relationship, will be facing his fate soon.
Isaac Smith, 30, is charged with criminal homicide and criminal homicide of an unborn child in the death of 26-year-old Karli Short, who authorities say was 5 months pregnant at the time of her death. Smith's trial began on Tuesday.
On the morning of Sept. 13, 2021, Short was at her uncle's home, where she also lived, on Furnace Alley in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a midsize city about 12 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
Short and Smith had been romantically involved, but according to him, only a few times, and he had a new girlfriend. Still, Short believed her baby belonged to Smith, and she had asked him for money and texted him about a gender reveal party just two days before, per court documents obtained by local ABC affiliate WTAE.
On the morning in question, Short's uncle reportedly heard her talking to someone on the phone.
"Are you coming to the front or the back?" her uncle heard her ask before she walked outside and he heard a gunshot. She was killed, and prosecutors — including Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Ryan Kiray — believe it was Smith who lured her to the yard and killed her.
Just hours after the shooting, Smith showed up at the Allegheny County Police Department's headquarters and gave them a three-hour interview, saying he wanted to clear his name. In addition to acknowledging that he had been intimate with Short, he said he was willing to be in the child's life.
He was apparently convincing. "We totally believed he was telling the truth," Detective Mark Restori said from the courtroom on Wednesday, according to The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
The defense has run with this point — that Smith was willing to support Short and their baby if indeed it proved to be his.
The prosecution argues otherwise.
"At the time the defendant pulled the trigger, he did not have a DNA test in his hand," Kiray said, pointing out how it was only revealed recently that Smith wasn't actually the father of Short's child. "Karli was ready to trumpet his name as the father of that unborn child."
Smith was dating a new woman, and she had just met his parents days before the shooting, prosecutors added. The defendant thus had a "clear motive" as "the walls were closing in" and he "did not want the double life he was living to be exposed."
The trial is expected to last about two weeks.
According to her obituary, Short "was extremely excited about becoming a first-time mother. Her bundle of joy was to arrive in February 2022."