DA's office to seek death penalty in slaying of McKeesport woman and unborn child

The Allegheny County District Attorney’s filed notice Friday that it will seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a woman and their unborn child in September in McKeesport.

Isaac Christopher Smith, 26, is accused of killing Karli Short, 26, on Sept. 13 in an alley behind the home where she was staying.

She was 5 months pregnant with his child and due in February.

Police said Smith had been texting Short and talking to her on the phone throughout that day.

Short left the house on 25th Street around 12:20 a.m. after taking a phone call, police said.

Her uncle testified testified at a preliminary hearing last month that about 15 seconds after she left the house, he heard a single gunshot. He called her name but never got an answer. The man, who uses a wheelchair, said he could not get outside to check, but assumed it was just a random gunshot, which he said was not uncommon in the neighborhood.

Short’s body was found in the alley about 10 hours later.

Smith was charged with criminal homicide and criminal homicide of an unborn child on Nov. 5.

A criminal complaint filed in the case said Smith was with another woman the night of the shooting and told her he was leaving to see a friend’s new puppy.

Records from Smith’s phone showed that Short sent him text messages on Sept. 11, two days before she died, asking him for money and discussing plans for a gender reveal party, which Smith was expected to attend.

Short was the daughter of former Penn State standout and NFL linebacker Brandon Short.

To obtain a sentence of death, prosecutors must show that there is at least one aggravating factor in the case, and that it outweighs any mitigating factors presented by the defense.

In Smith case, the DA’s office listed six aggravating factors:

• He committed the killing while committing a felony.
• He knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the homicide victim.
• He has a significant history of felony convictions involving the use or threat of violence.
• He has been convicted of another offense — committed either before or at the time of the offense at issue — for which life imprisonment or death was possible.
• He has been convicted of another murder in any jurisdiction, either before or at the time of the offense at issue.
• At the time of the killing, the victim was in her third trimester or the defendant had knowledge of her pregnancy.

Smith has no previous criminal record. However, under Pennsylvania law, prosecutors can consider the killing of two people at the same time — in this case Short and her unborn child — as being applicable to the above factors.

No one has been executed in Pennsylvania since 1999, and only three people have been executed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978.

The state Department of Corrections said 107 people are facing the death penalty in Pennsylvania, including eight people from Allegheny County. The most recent was Richard Poplawski, who was sentenced to death for the killings of three Pittsburgh police officers in 2009.

There are four pending death-penalty cases in Allegheny County.

Gov. Tom Wolf issued a moratorium on executions in 2015. Three years later, a report on capital punishment in Pennsylvania called into question the implementation of the penalty but did not call for its repeal.

While the notion of banning capital punishment has been considered by state legislators, no such bill has passed.