Ori Feibush’s Video Helped Solve Center City Slaying

You probably know Ori Feibush best as the developer who cleaned up a city-owned lot last year—and ended up in hot water over it. Maybe you know him as the owner of coffee shops in the gentrifying Graduate Hospital area, or as the proprietor of the Naked Philly real estate blog, or for any other of 1,000 reasons he ends up in the news regularly. His latest exploit: Helping catch Jason Smith, the man police say killed pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti in her home this week. Smith appeared on video shot at Feibush’s OCF coffee shop at 18th and South streets.

After days of poring through surveillance video from his coffee shop and other cameras he owns in the area, Feibush realized around 3 p.m. Wednesday that he had clear video of Jason Smith, a 36-year-old exterminator who was taken into custody for Ketunuti’s murder at his Bucks County home Wednesday night.

“We had crystal clear video of him walking right past the coffee shop and looking at the cameras,” Feibush told the Philadelphia Daily News in an exclusive interview Thursday. “I was exceptionally uncomfortable until they caught the guy because it looked like anybody who walks by the shop.”

Capitalist. Civic crusader. Crime fighter. Maybe Ori Feibush is becoming Philadelphia’s Batman? [Daily News]