Slain doctor's colleagues struggle to carry on

Out of sight of their patients, the doctors and staff at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia were holding onto each other and crying in back offices, in shock over the slaying of Melissa Ketunuti.

At some point, the news reports describing details of the pediatrician's killing Monday became so relentless that her colleagues needed desperately to end the noise and talk about her life.

So, on Thursday, "we simply commandeered the hospital's chapel," said Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases and Ketunuti's supervisor. "We wanted her to come to life in that room via the stories we told about her."

In a cathartic flood, doctors and staff laughed and cried and told tales of the "slight, very gentle, very soft-spoken woman." Professionals accustomed to dealing with the deaths of children found themselves struggling to come to terms with the loss of one of their own.

Not long afterward, a member of the infectious diseases group suggested that people gather at Ketunuti's Naudain Street home, where her body had been found strangled, bound, and set on fire.

Word spread throughout the hospital, and 50 doctors and staff members left to re-congregate in the cold darkness to honor the young woman from Thailand whom everyone thought of as remarkable, Offit said.

At turns smiling and verging on tears, Offit sat in his office Friday remembering his young charge.

"She was always interested in making a difference," said Offit, tall, fit, and gray-haired.

A second-year infectious diseases fellow, Ketunuti was developing a sub-speciality in pediatric infectious diseases.

Specifically, Ketunuti - who had traveled the world - was interested in helping to get vaccines of preventable diseases to children in developing countries, Offit said.

Ketunuti was also consumed by helping children with AIDS, he added.

"She wanted to help the least among us," Offit said.

Many children in the Third World die young because they do not get vaccinations for diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella, medical experts say.

"Melissa's belief was that every child has a right to a fifth birthday," Offit said.

Always gentle with young patients, Ketunuti was "dogged and rigorous" in trying to understand new things.

For a time, she struggled in her first year at Children's, but she took criticism well, demonstrating a toughness and strength that Offit had not expected.

An endearing habit of Ketunuti's was to speak like the people she encountered in the hospital, Offit said.

When a mother was referencing her child's seizures, she pronounced the word "she-zures." Rather than correcting her, Ketunuti explained how she would help stop the "she-zures."

"Melissa was trying to make the woman comfortable," Offit said.

The hospital is considering establishing a fellowship for global health in Ketunuti's name, Offit said.

"It's so she can live on," he added.

Then, his voice caught. "Her death is too hard," he said, rapping a knuckle on his desk. "She was too young."

Earlier in the day, Ketunuti's family issued a statement saying it was "devastated by this senseless act of violence that has ended the life of someone who was so loved, cherished, and admired."

In an interview, Manisha Pai, Ketunuti's roommate from Amherst College, said funeral arrangements were not complete Friday night.

Jason Smith, a 36-year-old exterminator from Levittown, was charged Thursday with Ketunuti's death.