Bob Simon, the longtime CBS News correspondent, died Wednesday night in a car accident in New York City. He was 73.

Bob Simon Dies

Wednesday evening, Simon was traveling on the West Side Highway in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car when the driver crashed into a Mercedes Benz, causing the vehicle to veer across the roadway and strike a pedestrian expansion, police told the New York Post. According to the driver of the Mercedes, the livery cab driver had been driving erratically.

“He swerved into me,” the 23-year-old driver told the Post. “He hit me and he looked like he lost control of the car.”

When emergency personnel arrived at the scene of the accident, they had to pry open the roof to remove Simon from the backseat of the car. Simon, who was unconscious and suffering from head and torso injuries, was rushed to Roosevelt Hospital in Midtown Manhattan, where he was eventually pronounced dead.

“Bob Simon was a giant of broadcast journalism, and a dear friend to everyone in the CBS News family. We are all shocked by this tragic, sudden loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bob’s extended family and especially with our colleague Tanya Simon,” said CBS News President David Rhodes.

Jeff Fager, 60 Minutes Executive Producer said, “It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News. 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,” Fager added. “There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much.”

Simon’s career at CBS News began in 1967. By the early 1970s, he was on the ground in Vietnam covering the war, and he continued to cover he war until the end in 1975. He also covered the violence in Northern Ireland in from 1969-71, and from other war zones around the world, including in Portugal and the Persian Gulf, as well as American military actions in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti, according to CBS.

Simon’s last piece aired on 60 Minutes last weekend in which he sat down with Selma director Ava DuVernay. For Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Simon had teamed up with his daughter to do a story on Ebola.

Simon is survived by his wife, Françoise, his daughter Tanya, and his grandson Jack.