Medical Examiner: Creecy Died of Blunt Force Trauma to Head

The Fulton County medical examiner's office says the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference died of blunt force trauma to the head after falling down stairs at his southwest Atlanta home, according to local news reports Friday evening.

A spokesman for the medical examiner's office said that the Rev. Howard Creecy Jr.'s death last month is listed as an accident, according to a news report on the CBS Atlanta website. The 57-year-old minister died July 28.

Authorities are unsure what caused Creecy to fall down the stairs.

A graduate of Douglass High School in 1971 and from Morehouse College in 1975, Creecy was elected SCLC president in late January after Bernice King, daughter of the organization's co-founder, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., declined the position.

Creecy was senior pastor at southwest Atlanta's St. Peter Missionary Baptist Church on Venetian for 26 years before joining his father at Olivet Church in 2002. 

His father, Rev. Howard Creecy, Sr., who died in 2008, was a well-known civil rights leader and pastor who marched with Dr. King. His cousin, Atlanta Judge Penny Reynolds is an Emmy-nominated television personality (Family Court with Judge Penny) and author.