Local reporter dies in Maryland car accident

By Jonathan Starkey
Staff Reporter

Longtime area newspaper reporter Jim Cresson, 60, died on Monday when his vehicle collided head-on with a delivery truck near Centerville, Md.

According to Maryland State Police, Cresson was driving on the wrong side of the road on U.S. 301 at about 7 p.m. on Monday when he ran into the 10-wheeler. Cresson was pronounced dead at the scene.

Since September of 1998, the 60-year-old Milford man, who left behind two children and a wife, worked as a news reporter at the Cape Gazette, a twice-weekly publication based in Lewes.

Dennis Forney, the publisher of the Lewes paper, said that Cresson, a Vietnam veteran, started his three-decade journalism career as an Army reporter. Forney said he had recently won first place in the 2005 Maryland Delaware D.C. Press Association’s editorial contest,

Cresson had a firm handle on those kinds of bigger stories, as well as community journalism, Forney added.

“He dogged that story for months,” Forney said of the DelDOT series. “Jim was a good man and he was a fine journalist,” Forney said. “That depth of experience and knowledge — they’re not going to be easy to replace.” Forney added that Cresson had been battling a pulmonary illness for the last several weeks.

“He was struggling to get his health back,” he said. “He was discouraged because of his health but he never lost his poise as a gentleman.”

Cresson also worked at weekly newspapers Delaware Coast Press and the Delaware Wave. Susan Lyons, current publisher of the Coastal Point and who hired Cresson to be the editor of the Delaware Wave in the mid-1990s, also worked with Cresson when she was an advertising manager and he was a reporter at the Coast Press.

“He had a great passion for the newspaper business and he always was a great storyteller. Anybody who’s been in this business in Sussex County knew him,” Lyons said, adding that she was shocked to hear about the accident when a Cape Gazette employee called her on Tuesday.

“He had a great enthusiasm for a good news story,” she added. “He would get so excited when we had a breaking story. He would run out the door.”

According to the police report, the Maryland State Police received numerous complaints about 6:45 p.m. on Monday night that a Caravan was driving on the wrong side of U.S. 301.

Cpl. Arthur G. Lowman responded and, fearing for the lives of others, drove up alongside Cresson on the wrong side of the highway, according to the report. That report states that Lowman tried to stop Cresson but was bumped by the van. Lowman then bumped the Caravan, keeping it from colliding with another car; but seconds later, Cresson ran head-on into the box truck, according to Maryland State Police, starting a three-vehicle accident.

The truck bounced off of the Caravan and into the driver’s side of the police car, according to the report. Lowman, 40, a 21-year veteran of the force was flown by helicopter to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he remains in serious but non-life-threatening condition, the report states.

The driver of the truck, Chung K. Chang, 47, and his passenger, Jang H. Hong, 51, were also flown by helicopter to Shock Trauma, according to the report, where they remained in serious condition.

The investigation is ongoing.