NTSB now says a 13-year-old was not a driver in a Texas crash that killed 9 people

Texas Department of Public Safety Troopers look over the scene of a fatal collision in March in Andrews County, Texas. A pickup truck crossed the center line of a two-lane road and crashed into a van carrying members of the University of the Southwest men's and women's golf teams. (Eli Hartman/Odessa American via AP, File)

DALLAS — A Texas man, not his 13-year-old son, was driving the pickup truck that crossed into the oncoming lane and struck a van carrying New Mexico college golfers, killing nine people, and he had methamphetamine in his system, investigators said Thursday.

The National Transportation Safety Board said two days after the March 15 collision that its early findings suggested that the 13-year-old was driving the pickup that struck the van carrying University of the Southwest students and coaches back to Hobbs, New Mexico, from a golf tournament in Midland, Texas. But the NTSB said in a preliminary report released Thursday that DNA testing confirmed that the father, 38-year-old Henrich Siemens, was driving and that toxicological testing showed the presence of methamphetamine in the Siemens' blood.