LOS ANGELES — Jim Avila, a longtime network news correspondent who reported on the O.J. Simpson trial for KNBC in Los Angeles, died Wednesday. He was 70.

Mr. Avila died from complications from a fall, according to NBC News correspondent Josh Mankiewicz, a friend and former colleague. A kidney transplant recipient, Mr. Avila had been in hospice care for six weeks.

Mr. Avila is the son of the late Jim Simon, a radio executive who helped pioneer the news talk format at KABC in Los Angeles. He went by his maternal grandmother's last name professionally, as did two of his three brothers who all worked in broadcast journalism.

Mr. Avila grew up in Lombard, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago where he attended Glenbard East High School. He began his career in 1973 as a reporter for KCBS-AM, an a

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