A father, and not his 13-year-old son, was driving a pickup truck involved in a fatal crash in West Texas earlier this year, federal investigators said Thursday, adding that the man had methamphetamine in his system.
Nine people were killed after a 2007 Dodge 2500 pickup truck crossed into the oncoming lane and crashed into a van carrying student golfers from the University of the Southwest, a private Christian college in Hobbs, New Mexico. The deadly crash happened on March 15, around 8:17 p.m. in Andrews County, Texas, near the New Mexico border.
The truck slammed into the van head-on, police said at the time. Both the driver and the passenger of the van died, along with six members of the golf team and their coach.
Shortly after the collision, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that early findings suggested that the teenager was driving the truck.
But on Thursday, the NTSB announced in a preliminary report that DNA testing results provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety “confirmed the identity of the driver of the pickup truck as the 38-year-old male, correcting initial reports that the 13-year-old male passenger had been operating the truck at the time of the crash.”
The Associated Press has identified the man as Henrich Siemens.
“In addition to the DNA test results, NTSB postcrash toxicological testing revealed the presence of methamphetamine in the pickup truck driver’s blood,” the agency added.
Investigators had initially said that the truck’s left front tire blew before impact. However, no evidence of “a sudden or rapid loss of tire air pressure or any other indicators of catastrophic failure of the pickup truck’s front left tire” has been found, according to the report.
The crash will remain under investigation while the NTSB continues to work to determine the probable cause of the crash.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, those killed in the van were: coach Tyler James, 26, of Hobbs, New Mexico, as well as six students: Travis Garcia, 19, of Pleasanton, Texas; Jackson Zinn, 22, of Westminster, Colorado; Karisa Raines, 21, of Fort Stockton, Texas; Laci Stone, 18, of Nocona, Texas; Mauricio Sanchez, 19, of Mexico; and Tiago Sousa, 18, of Portugal.
Two students from Canada were also seriously injured.
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