’60 Minutes’ correspondent Bob Simon killed in car accident

Bob Simon, a journalist for CBS News’s “60 Minutes,” died Wednesday at the age of 73 after a car accident in New York City.

The veteran reporter was traveling in a livery cab on the West Side Highway in New York City, according to reports. The Lincoln Town Car he was riding struck another vehicle before colliding with a median.

A police source told the New York Daily News that the impact was so severe that both the driver and Simon had to be cut out of the vehicle. 

Simon was taken to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the source said. Simon’s driver and the driver of the other car did not suffer serious injuries.

“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News,” said “60 Minutes” Executive Producer Jeff Fager 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.

“Bob was a reporter’s reporter,” Fager added. “He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable. There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much.”

“The tragic loss of Bob Simon is heartbreaking news for the entire CBS family. A true legend,” added Chris Licht, the vice president of CBS News, in a tweet.

A legendary foreign correspondent, Simon’s career spanned five decades. He first joined CBS News in 1967 based in New York City. But his work soon took him around the world, first to a post in the network’s Tel Aviv bureau and then to Vietnam.

Simon was based in Saigon from 1971 to 1972 during some of the Vietnam War’s fiercest battles and earned an Overseas Press Club (OPC) award for his coverage.  

He also covered conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, Yugoslavia and Iraq. During the Persian Gulf War, he was captured by Iraqi forces and spent more than a month in captivity, later sharing his experiences in a memoir.

His reporting of the first Gulf War won him another OPC award.

In 1996, he again won an OPC award, a Peabody and two Emmy Awards for his coverage of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

In all, Simon won 27 Emmys over his career, including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003.

He joined “60 Minutes” in 1996. Simon’s final report for the news magazine aired on Sunday, an interview with Ava DuVernay the director of “Selma.”

Fellow journalists took to social media to offer their condolences to Simon’s family and praise the veteran correspondent’s legacy.

Legendary @60Minutes and @CBSNews correspondent Bob Simon has died: http://t.co/ZyiFOlcuF3 pic.twitter.com/0hm4FFWX7F

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 12, 2015

#BobSimon was the best writer, in my opinion, working in broadcast news. I have admired him from the time I was a kid watching #CBSNews

— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) February 12, 2015

RIP Bob Simon, a television storyteller without peer. http://t.co/lZ5RdXJBxD Dies in 2 car crash in Manhattan.

— david carr (@carr2n) February 12, 2015

Heartbreaking news about Bob Simon of @60Minutes, a brilliant writer and reporter and someone I admired deeply.

— Katie Couric (@katiecouric) February 12, 2015

— This story was last updated at 10:54 p.m.