Authorities investigating a fiery head-on crash in West Texas don’t know why a 13-year-old boy was driving while his father sat in the passenger seat of a pick-up truck that crossed into the oncoming lane and collided with a passenger van, killing nine people, including seven members of a college golf team.
The young teen who died in the crash along with his father, 38-year-old Henrich Siemens, and six members of a New Mexico college golf team and their coach. The cause remains under investigation, though National Transportation Safety Board officials have said the truck’s front tyre, a spare, blew out before the crash.
NTSB Vice-Chairman Bruce Landsberg revealed the truck was driven by the child.
After the tyre blew, the pick-up truck crossed into the opposite lane on the darkened, two-lane highway before colliding with the van. Both vehicles burst into flames.
Although it was unclear how fast the two vehicles were travelling, “this was clearly a high-speed collision,” Landsberg said. The speed limit at the crash site is 120kph.
Landsberg said investigators hoped to retrieve enough information from the vehicles’ recorders, if they survived, to understand what happened. He said many in the van were not wearing seat belts and at least one was ejected from the vehicle.
It’s not unusual for young teens to drive in that region and other more rural parts of the United States. One must be 14 in Texas to start taking classroom courses for a learner’s license and 15 to receive that provisional license to drive with an instructor or licensed adult in the vehicle.
Investigators have not yet determined why the youth was behind the wheel, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Steven Blanco said.
The NTSB sent an investigative team to the crash site in Texas’ Andrews County, about 50km east of the New Mexico state line.
The University of the Southwest students, including one from Portugal and one from Mexico, and the coach were returning from a golf tournament in Midland, Texas, when the vehicles collided Tuesday night. Two Canadian students were hospitalised in critical condition.
“They are both stable and recovering, and every day making more and more progress,” University of the Southwest Provost Ryan Tipton said Thursday.
“One of the students is eating chicken soup,” said Tipton, calling their recovery a “game of inches”.
