Man accused of killing Karli Short and their unborn child ordered to stand trial

Percy Quinn Rees said the last time he saw his niece, 26-year-old Karli Short, they were watching television together.

Or rather, he said, she was watching television. He wasn’t much interested in the program, but Short always had control of the remote.

Rees spoke of those moments Friday during a preliminary hearing for Isaac Smith, the father of Short’s unborn son and the man charged with homicide in connection with her death last year.

Smith, 26, of McKeesport, pleaded not guilty to the counts of homicide and homicide of an unborn child. After two hours of testimony, District Judge Beth Mills ordered Smith to stand trial on the charges.

It was just after midnight Sept. 13, and upwards of a dozen people had been coming and going from the house where Short was staying all day, Rees said. The crowd by that point had dwindled to just them at the home on 25th Street in McKeesport when Short got a call around 12:20 a.m.

“She got up, I told her to be safe, and she said she’d see me later,” Rees said.

About 10 to 15 seconds later, Rees estimated, he heard a single gunshot.

“I screamed her name as loud as I could four times,” said Rees, who uses a wheelchair and could not get up to check outside. He said she never responded, and he assumed it was a random gunshot.

Short’s body was discovered about 10 hours later at the end of a walkway that led from the home to Furnace Alley, which runs behind the home. The home’s security system captured video of Short walking out the back door but did not capture the shooting or the area in which her body was found.

Allegheny County homicide detectives testified that Short and Smith exchanged text messages and calls prior to the shooting. Smith’s defense attorney, Eric Jackson Lurie, argued that detectives have no way of knowing whether Smith was the one who made the calls or sent the texts, which detectives said came from Smith’s personal cellphone and a phone he had someone else buy for him.

Smith told police that he’d been with his girlfriend – a woman investigators say believed she and Smith were exclusive as a couple – during the day of Sept. 12. They parted ways at some point, and Smith did not return home until sometime that night, as the woman told police she was asleep when he got into bed with her.

Smith had told the woman he was going to see a dog at a friend’s home, detectives said. That friend later told investigators that Smith arrived at her home sometime after 10:40 p.m. and they engaged in sexual activity. Police said the woman told them they fell asleep, and she wasn’t sure what time Smith left her home.

Detectives said Smith was forthcoming about the firearms he owned, including a Smith and Wesson revolver that he pawned between his first and second interviews with police. He directed investigators to the pawn shop, where they verified the sale and recovered the revolver.

Lurie said Smith’s openness with police is not the behavior of a criminal. He said none of the texts exchanged between the two showed anger, threats or hostility.

“I don’t know any criminals who sell guns that they use and then tell the police,” he said.

But Assistant District Attorney Alison Bragle said the Smith and Wesson revolver, when test-fired, matched the round that was recovered from Short during an autopsy.

“This isn’t ‘might be the murder weapon’ – this is the murder weapon,” she said.

Lurie argued that investigators had no evidence linking Smith to the scene or the crime, and what little information they did have came from Smith himself.

Mills, who presided over the preliminary hearing, disagreed and held all charges over for court.

After the hearing, Short’s father, former Penn State standout and NFL linebacker Brandon Short, said the hearing felt like the first step toward justice.

“It’s painful to listen to some of the cross examination and questioning (of) character, but it’s necessary,” Short said. “I’m as happy as I can be given the circumstances.”

He described his daughter as an amazing human who just wanted to make other people happy.

“She was in the prime of her life and was so happy about being a mother,” he said. “And the father of her child took her life because he didn’t want to have a baby. It’s the most cowardly thing.”