The livery cab driver who crashed his Lincoln Town Car into a pedestrian median on the West Side Highway, killing CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, reportedly had nine previous license suspensions and two moving violations—and only one functioning arm after a failed suicide attempt.
Bob Simon (Getty Images)
, driver Reshad Abdul Fedahi "lost the use of his left arm after he jumped from a Brooklyn building in a suicide attempt about a decade ago." A resident who lives at the same homeless shelter as Fedahi said, "He has a messed-up arm. One arm doesn’t move at all. He does everything with one arm."
The Post's sources say that Fedahi only had one hand on the wheel at the time of the Wednesday night crash. Police believe the Fedahi hit the gas, not the brakes, when heading south on the West Side Highway. Traffic had stopped for a red light, and the livery cab hit the driver's side of a Mercedes Benz and then "careened into metal stanchions separating the north and south bound traffic."
Both Simon, 73, and and Fedahi, 44, had to be cut out of the car. Simon was not wearing a seat belt, and suffered head injuries and a broken neck. He died at Roosevelt Hospital
Fedahi is in the hospital with broken legs and a broken arm. His cousin Rauf Sharif told the Daily News that "he complained of having 'a sharp pain' in the chest before the wreck and thinks he may have had a heart attack." Sharif said, "He remembered coming very slowly to the light, and then all of a sudden, he just blacked out. He didn't know what happened. He said, 'I lost myself.’"
Fedahi was on a probationary license with the TLC; it has been suspended now. From the Post:
He started working as a black-car driver for Skyline Credit Ride only in October 2014. Skyline, based in Long Island City, Queens, has had a contract with CBS for more than 30 years.
His car was owned by Travez Transportation, and when he wasn’t working, he would use it to ferry pals from the homeless shelter where he lived on Wards Island to Manhattan, friends said...
Another driver at Skyline said Fedahi should never have been on the road - and that he was fired after customers complained about his driving, only to be rehired by a new manager.
“The management changed. He was let go by the old management because passengers were complaining that he couldn’t lift bags and they didn’t want to be in a car with a driver with only one hand,” the driver said.
The police investigation into the crash is still continuing. Fadehi has not been charged.
Simon led a storied career reporting from war zones around the world and wrote a book about the 40 days he spent as a hostage in Iran during the Gulf War. He was in his 19th season with 60 Minutes, where his final segment, about Ebola, will air this Sunday.
60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager said, "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. He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable."
