Murder charges against suspended Virginia Tech player Isi Etute go to grand jury

A second-degree murder charge against a Virginia Tech football player was sent to a grand jury on Thursday after he appeared in court.

Isimemen David “Isi” Etute was arrested and charged on June 2 in the killing of 40-year-old Jerry Paul Smith. The grand jury will decide if the case against Etute will go to trial. 

Etute was suspended from the Virginia Tech team this summer, and he was released on $75,000 secured bond approximately one week after his arrest. He has been on house arrest and electronic monitoring since.

According to official statements, Etute found someone named “Angie” on Tinder, a popular dating app, and they met up on April 10 for a sexual encounter, at which point Etute and his friends began to question if “Angie” was male or female. For the moment, Etute ended all communication with “Angie.”

When 18-year-old Etute returned to Smith’s Blacksburg apartment on May 31 for another sexual encounter and to determine if Smith was a man or a woman, he beat Smith to death, punching him five times, and stomped on him. Police testified in court that the apartment was dark, so Etute positioned himself to determine Angie’s sex. Upon seeing facial hair after turning on a phone flashlight, Etute started assaulting Smith. 

He left Smith in his apartment and did not call the police. The autopsy on Smith’s body showed the bones in his face were broken, his teeth were missing, and he suffered several cranial fractures. The cause of death was ruled as blunt force injury to the head.

The defense revealed in court that a knife was found between Smith’s box spring and mattress. They asked that the charge be downgraded to voluntary manslaughter, but that was denied. Jimmy Turk, Etute’s attorney, said his client was unaware that Smith had died until police contacted him the following day to discuss the incident. 

Turk has expressed that while the case is heartbreaking, Etute seems to be an exceptional young man who has never had issues before. More than a dozen Virginia Tech football players attended Thursday’s hearing. 

Etute was a three-star linebacker at Cox High School in Virginia Beach before enrolling at Virginia Tech this year. The Montgomery County (Va.) grand jury will proceed and determine if the indictment goes through.