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

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

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.

Avila grew up in Lombard, Illinois, 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 all-news station in San Francisco. He shifted to television three years later at KPIX-TV, where he was the San Jose bureau chief.

Avila headed to Chicago in 1980 where he joined the local news operation at ABC-owned WLS and later worked for the CBS outlet WBBM, where he reported on politics and served as an anchor.

Avila moved to Los Angeles in 1994 to join KNBC, and became a fixture outside the downtown courthouse where Simpson was on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. Avila covered the story from the day police first investigated the killings at Simpson's Brentwood home. His work earned an Emmy and a Golden Mike Award.

As with many TV journalists at the time, the Simpson saga was Avila's ticket to a network career. He moved to the Midwest bureau of NBC in Chicago in 1996 and became a national correspondent for "NBC Nightly News."

Durable and versatile, he averaged 130 reports annually during his years on the NBC broadcast. He reported from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he filed from inside the network's Baghdad hotel compound during and after a terrorist bombing attack.

Avila jumped to ABC News in 2004, where he was the senior justice and law correspondent and covered high-profile trials for the network. Avila had a stint as White House correspondent from 2012 to 2016.

Avila was the correspondent for a 2012 ABC News report on the use of processed meat product known as pink slime, used as filler in ground beef. A South Dakota meat processor, Beef Products Inc., said it was damaged by the report that questioned the safety of its goods and filed a defamation suit against ABC News for $1.9 billion.

ABC News settled the case for $177 million but stood by its reporting.

In 2017, Avila worked out of Los Angeles, specializing in law and justice and consumer investigations. A frequent presence on "World News Tonight" and "20/20," he remained with the network until 2022.

Avila won numerous awards over his career, including Reporter of the Year from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 1999. He won a Cine Golden Eagle Award for a report on an immigrant couple who put their son through MIT by collecting cans through the streets of Los Angeles.

Avila briefly came out of retirement in 2023, working part-time as an investigative reporter for KGTV in San Diego.

He is survived by his mother, Eve Simon; two brothers: Jai Avila, an investigative reporter for WOAI in San Antonio, and Thomas Avila; a sister, Kari Lemay; and three children, Jamie, Jeanette and Evan.

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