NTSB: 13-year-old was not driver in Texas crash that killed 9

A 13-year-old boy was not the person driving on March 15 when a pickup truck collided head-on with a van carrying members of a university golf team in Texas, killing nine people, officials with the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

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Earlier, officials said the teenager was behind the wheel of the truck when it crossed the centerline of a road in Andrews County and struck the van. Both people in the truck -- the boy and his 38-year-old father, Henrich Siemens -- and seven people in the transit van died in the collision.

On Thursday, authorities said investigators initially believed that the 13-year-old was driving based on information available at the time. However, DNA testing has since shown that Siemens was driving. Testing also determined that the 38-year-old had methamphetamine in his system, according to the NTSB.

Robert Molloy, director of the NTSB’s Office of Highway Safety, declined Thursday to speak specifically about what made investigators believe that the 13-year-old was driving, however, he emphasized that the crash was “a very high-energy collision” that caused damage that he described as “catastrophic.”

“This made understanding some of the details of the crash very difficult,” he said. “This was a team decision that, at the time, they believed the 13-year-old was driving.”

Investigators have so far found no evidence that a tire failure caused the crash, as initially suspected, Molloy said. Authorities are looking into what role speed might have played, as the collision happened in an area with a speed limit of 75 mph, and working to determine whether the methamphetamine found in Siemens’ system contributed to the crash.

“We just received the toxicology report yesterday. We haven’t had the chance to go into a lot of detail about it,” Molloy said. “We know that it was found in his system. Certainly, we know that meth can affect driver performance … but at this point it’s too early to say if (that) ... contributed to this crash at all.”

The collision happened just before 8:20 p.m. local time on Farm-to-Market Road 1788. Both the truck and the van caught fire and were destroyed, officials said.

The van was carrying eight members of the golf team from the University of the Southwest in Hobbs, New Mexico, who had earlier participated in a tournament in Midland, Texas. The team coach, 26-year-old Tyler James, was driving.

James and six members of the golf team died in the crash. Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety identified those killed as 19-year-old Mauricio Sanchez, 19-year-old Travis Garcia, 22-year-old Jackson Zinn, 21-year-old Karissa Raines, 18-year-old Laci Stone and 18-year-old Tiago Sousa.

Two other student-athletes were seriously injured, officials said.

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