Jury selection completed in doctor's strangling

A Philadelphia jury of six men and six women was selected Monday to hear the murder trial of a Levittown exterminator charged in the 2013 strangling of Philadelphia doctor Melissa Ketunuti.

Jason Smith, 39, is accused of killing Ketunuti, 35, a pediatrician and researcher at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, during a Jan. 21, 2013, argument at her house in 1700 block of Naudain Street in the Graduate Hospital area of Center City.

Smith, an independent exterminator hired by a Bucks County firm, was assigned to rid Ketunuti's rowhouse of mice. During the appointment, police allege, Ketunuti questioned Smith's work, and he got angry and strangled her.

Smith then allegedly set Ketunuti's body on fire in an attempt to destroy the crime scene. Smith was arrested several days later after an outside-surveillance video camera recorded his entering and leaving Ketunuti's house at the time of the killing.

Assistant District Attorneys Jennifer Selber and Peter Lim and defense attorney J. Michael Farrell spent Monday picking the 12 jurors and two alternates from a panel of 60 prospects.

Common Pleas Court Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd told the jurors to report Wednesday for the start of what he said would be about three days of testimony in the trial.