The Rev. Howard Creecy Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, suffered "blunt force head trauma" before he died July 28, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.
A spokesman for the medical examiner’s office said Friday that Creecy’s death certificate lists the 57-year-old minister's death as accidental.
The popular pastor, who took over leadership of the SCLC in January, was inside his Atlanta home at the top of stairs and somehow lost his balance and fell down the stairs, the medical examiner's office said. Creecy struck his head on the way down, causing the trauma.
Creecy, pastor of The Olivet Baptist Church in Fayetteville, was pronounced dead at 1:56 a.m. July 28 at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Creecy’s family suspected he had suffered a heart attack. The death certificate, however, does not list heart attack as a cause of death and does not say the minister had one before falling down the stairs.
The death certificate does note that Creecy suffered from hypertension, or high blood pressure, which has been known to increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Creecy, a third-generation preacher and Morehouse College graduate, was already SCLC interim president when he took over permanently on Jan. 30.
After months of turmoil over leadership and finances within the organization, Creecy was seen as a stabilizing force who could take the 54-year-old organization co-founded by Martin Luther King Jr. forward and put it on sounder footing.
After Creecy’s death, King's nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., was named interim president. The SCLC is continuing to make plans for its annual convention Aug. 14-16 in Atlanta, and its leadership is expected to be high on the agenda.
Creecy served for nearly three decades as Fulton County's chaplain, and in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article last year said he had presided over more than 10,000 pauper's burials.
“I have a responsibility to see my clients have dignity in death,” Creecy said of the poor buried by the county. “I try to provide that for them.”
He is survived by his wife, Yolanda Grier Creecy, and two daughters, Teresa and Kennedy.
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