Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of a 19-year-old Joliet man charged with the May 1997 murder of a teenage girl from Joliet.
Christopher D. McCallum, of the 200 block of McRoberts Street in Joliet, was indicted in July 1997 for allegedly choking Davona Duncan, 18, to death with a wire.
McCallum also was indicted last year for arson for allegedly setting ablaze Duncan’s 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix, which was found burning behind Joliet Central High School on May 14, 1997, the day after Duncan had disappeared from her home.
McCallum, who has pleaded innocent to the charges, has been held at the Will County Jail for more than a year.
Duncan’s body was found May 26, 1997, in a ditch outside the Joliet Country Club. The indictment stated she was killed on or about the night of her disappearance.
The dead girl’s mother, Floretta Duncan, told police at the time that her daughter knew McCallum from junior high school but that she was not the youth’s girlfriend.
According to police reports, Duncan left her home in the 1300 block of Demmond Street the night of May 13 after receiving a telephone call, and never returned.