BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Bob Simon, the “60 Minutes” correspondent and award-winning foreign reporter, died last Wednesday evening after a car accident on the West Side Highway in Chelsea.
According to police, Simon, 73, was riding in the back seat of a 2010 Lincoln Town Car at 12th Ave. and W. 30th St. on Feb. 11 at 6:45 p.m. when it collided with another car, then went out of control.
First responders found Simon unconscious and unresponsive with injuries to his head and torso, pinned inside the livery cab. By cutting off the car’s top, police managed to extricate Simon, whose condition was initially reported as “likely to die.” An E.M.S. ambulance transported him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital where he was pronounced DOA.
The driver of Simon’s car, 44, was removed to Bellevue Hospital for treatment for leg and arm injuries. He was reported to be in stable condition.
A police investigation revealed that the Town Car had been traveling southbound on 12th Ave. when it struck the driver’s side of a black 2003 Mercedes-Benz that was stopped at a red light on 12th Ave. at W. 30 St.
According to police, after the initial collision, the Town Car then careened into metal stanchions separating the north- and southbound traffic. The Mercedes-Benz’s driver, a 23-year-old man, was uninjured.
There were no arrests.
Simon lived on the Upper West Side on W. 70th St., near Central Park.
Earlier in his career, he won acclaim for his extensive reporting on the Vietnam War. At the conflict’s end, he was aboard one of the last helicopters out of Saigon in 1975.
“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News,” Jeff Fager, “60 Minutes” executive producer, said in a statement. “It is such a tragedy, made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times.”
In 1991, Simon was captured near the Kuwaiti border by Iraqi forces during the start of the Gulf War. He was held hostage for 40 days and was beaten and tortured.
Following the accident, it was reported that Simon’s driver, Abdul Reshad Fedahi, had use of only one arm after having jumped out of a building a decade ago in a failed suicide attempt after a split from his wife, which left him with a “dead arm.”
Over the last three years, Fedahi’s driver’s license has reportedly been suspended nine times.
In the crash that killed Simon, he reportedly sped up instead of braking after hitting the other car.
