Lawyers for Bob Simon, the 60 Minutes reporter killed in a car crash in 2015, say a key piece of evidence has gone missing
The Lincoln car seat at the center of Bob Simon’s car crash lawsuit has mysteriously gone missing after the accused transport company inspected the vehicle.
Howard Hershenhorn, attorney for Simon’s family, says the leather bench seat from the back of the vehicle vanished earlier this year after Skyline Credit Ride conducted a ‘secret inspection’ of the totaled vehicle.
The seat is vital to the defense’s claim that Simon, 73, was not wearing his belt at the time of the crash, contributing to injuries which claimed his life.
Hershenhorn flatly denies this claim, saying the company should bear full responsibility for the fatal accident.
In court papers seen by the New York Post, Hershenhorn insinuates that the inspection was carried out as part of a plot to spoil the evidence.
He writes: “I wonder why [defense attorney Brian Harris] would do [the inspection] without notifying anybody else?
‘Is it because he wants to be playing in the spirit of fairness? Or is it because he wanted some tactical advantage?’
Howard Hershenhorn, attorney for Simon’s family, says the back seat of the Lincoln in which he dies has been lost and blames the defense for carrying out a ‘secret’ inspection
The seat is vital to the defense claim that Simon was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the crash, contributing to the injuries that killed him
He later adds: ‘The Skyline defendants are responsible for the spoliation of evidence.’
However, Harris says the inspection was carried out with a police escort and said he would ‘never risk my licence’ by carrying out such a plot.
The seat must have been removed at some point, because Hershenhorn has a picture of the rear leather bench propped up alongside the vehicle.
But Harris denies that anyone from his team removed the seat, and instead lays the blame at the feet of a company charged with moving the vehicle to storage.
The seat was pictured outside the vehicle in January this year, and in February it was moved to storage in Queens.
Harris suggests that, when the vehicle was moved, the leather bench was left behind by accident and is now lost.
Simon, who survived being held in an Iraqi prison and was one of the last reporters to leave Saigon during the Vietnam War, died in February 2015 after a crash on Manhattan’s West Side Highway.
The prosecution denies that Simon was not wearing his seat belt and say that driver Reshad Abdul Fedahi, who has a history of motoring offenses, was to blame
Simon died in February 2015 after the Lincoln he was traveling in rear-ended a Mercedes stopped at a red light before careening into metal barriers
Witnesses said the Lincoln being driven by Reshad Abdul Fedahi was veering erratically as it traveled south near West 30th Street, just before the 7pm crash.
The car rear-ended a Mercedes-Benz stopped at a red light and then slammed into the metal barriers separating lanes.
The reporter was found unconscious with head and torso injuries. He was rushed to Mount Sinai-Roosevelt Hospital in the city where he was later pronounced dead.
It was later revealed that Fedahi, 44, had nine license suspensions and two speeding convictions on his record.
He was also allegedly driving with one hand because his left arm had been rendered useless due to a suicide attempt.
Two days prior to the crash, a number of customers had complained to Skyline about Fedahi’s poor driving, the prosecution allege.