MANHATTAN — Investigators believe that Bob Simon's driver accelerated just before the crash that killed the celebrated "60 Minutes" correspondent Wednesday night, sources said.
Simon, 73, had just left CBS's studio in Reshad Abdul Fedahi's Lincoln Town Car and was heading down the West Side Highway about 7 p.m. when Fedahi hit a Mercedes-Benz at West 30th Street and then smashed into metal stanchions in the median strip of the highway, sources said.
Simon, who sources said hadn't been wearing a seat belt at the time, was pronounced dead at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, according to the NYPD.
Fedahi, who was driving on a probationary Taxi and Limousine Commission license he got about five months ago, broke his legs and an arm and was treated at Bellevue Hospital, sources and officials said.
A witness, who was behind Fedahi, told investigators that the livery driver was driving normally up until he hit the Mercedes and then abruptly accelerated, sources said.
Police will examine a black box-like recording device that was in Fedahi's Lincoln on Friday, sources said.
Sources said Fedahi's had nine non-moving violations for failing to pay various tickets, none of which had to do with driving.
But he had also been given two moving violations: once for passing through a red light and another for speeding in Sullivan County, sources said.
