A National Transportation Safety Board official said during a Thursday press conference that a 13-year-old was driving the pickup truck that collided with a van near Andrews Tuesday night killing nine people.
NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said Thursday that the truck’s left front tire, which was a spare tire, also blew out before impact. The NTSB press conference was livestreamed by Odessa American media partners CBS7.
Landsberg said he sent condolences to the family and friends of the victims.
At 8:17 p.m. Tuesday, a 2007 Dodge 2500 3/4 ton pickup was northbound on Farm to Market Road 1788, crossed into the southbound lane and collided with an 11-passenger 2017 Transit van towing an eight-foot cargo trailer. Landsberg said the bus was carrying the golf coach and eight team members of the University of the Southwest’s men’s and women’s golf team.
“Tragically, the coach and six team members were killed at the site of the crash. Two team members were transported to Lubbock-area hospitals in critical condition,” Landsberg said.
The driver and passenger of the pickup truck that crossed the center line were also killed, he said.
“A 13-year old child was behind the wheel of the pickup truck. It appears at this point in the investigation that the left front tire, which was a spare tire, had failed which resulted in the vehicle pulling hard to the left and crossing into the opposing lane,” Landsberg said.
He added that NTSB is an independent agency whose task is to investigate all types of transportation accidents — aviation, highway, marine, rail and pipeline to come up with the probable cause and to make recommendations to the regulatory agencies to prevent the recurrence.
The site team from NTSB will be on site for the next several days. Landsberg said it is quite a multi-disciplinary team.
“We have highway survival factors, human performance, toxicology, vehicle performance, vehicle recorders and we’ll be looking at the licensing procedures of the drivers to see what their background is,” Landsberg said. “We also have a member from our transportation disaster assistance unit that will be working with the families and helping them through this process. The team will be here for several days to gather perishable evidence and to interview any witnesses that may have been present to look at the crash. Our preliminary report will be available in two to three weeks and we’ll take about three months to gather additional data and then there will be an in-depth analysis of all of this.”
He said the final report and probable cause will take somewhere between 12 and 18 months to issue. All of it will be available on the NTSB website.
“Various aspects of highway safety have been on the NTSB’s most wanted list for a number of years — DUI, distracted driving, youth driving, tire safety, post-crash fire, excessive speed on rural highways, seatbelt use and ejections. We’re not here to speculate on the probable cause at this point, nor are we involved in any criminal aspect of the investigation. That’s not our responsibility,” Landsberg said.
“The carnage on our highways exceeds any other mode of transportation. In no other mode would we tolerate 100-plus fatalities each and every day. So by the end of today 100 more people will have died on our highways and thousands more will have suffered life-altering injuries, including severe burns, amputations and so forth, which we do not want to minimize so we think it’s high time that we started to take our driving a bit more seriously than what it is,” he added.
The Associated Press reported that 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. Department of Public Safety Sgt. Victor Taylor said a 13-year-old driving would be breaking the law.
Although it was unclear how fast the two vehicles were traveling, “this was clearly a high-speed collision,” Landsberg said during the NTSB press conference.
Meanwhile, the University of the Southwest in Hobbs, N.M., held a news conference Thursday at Scarborough Memorial Library on campus to offer a recap of the tragedy, updates on those who survived and the mood of the school community.
Paula Smith, vice president for financial services and chief financial officer for USW, said at a news conference the institution is “crushed and broken, but strong.”
Smith and Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Ryan Tipton spoke at a news conference Thursday at Scarborough Memorial Library on the USW campus in Hobbs, N.M.
The Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed the identities of all nine people Wednesday afternoon. The six students from University of the Southwest who were killed include 19-year-old Mauricio Sanchez, of Mexico, 19-year-old Travis Garcia of Pleasanton, 22-year-old Jackson Zinn of Westminster, Colo., 21-year-old Karissa Raines of Fort Stockton, 18-year-old Laci Stone of Nocona and 18-year-old Tiago Sousa of Portugal. The coach was identified as 26-year-old Tyler James, who was in his first season as the head coach of the University of the Southwest.
The two deceased in the pickup were identified as 38-year-old Henrich Siemens of Seminole and an unidentified 13-year-old boy.
All nine people were pronounced dead by Justice of the Peace Neri Flores.
Two students were airlifted to University Medical Center in Lubbock. They were identified as 19-year-old Dayton Price of Mississauga, Ontario, and 20-year-old Hayden Underhill of Amherstview, Ontario.
Tipton said Thursday that the two survivors are stable, recovering and making steady progress.
The University of the Southwest is a private Christian university in Hobbs, N.M. Its enrollment is 1,100 to 1,200 students online and on campus, Tipton said. He said about 300-350 students are on campus.
The university was on spring break this week.
Tipton said university president Quint Thurman was at the hospital in Lubbock visiting with families of the injured students. Tipton noted that he has kept in close touch with all the families since the tragedy occurred.
Tipton thanked the campus community, City of Hobbs and Lea County for their support during this time.
“These aren’t the kinds of things you ever dream (will) happen. It shouldn’t happen, but family here in Hobbs and Lea County have really come together to take care of one another,” Tipton said.
As an institution, Tipton said they are a family and that family extends to its students, faculty and staff, but also to the families of our students, faculty and staff.
The news conference was also live streamed Thursday, so Tipton said many of those families were watching.
“The one thing that we continue to do is communicate and speak with and comfort and support those families first. So if there’s ever a delay in communications to media like this it will only be because we are making sure that those families receive that information first. I spoke with all of them this morning …,” Tipton said.
GoFundMe has notified the Odessa American of four verified pages for funeral expenses for Raines and medical expenses for Price. The page for Raines is tinyurl.com/yckssbev, while the page for Price is tinyurl.com/8x5faw45 and the page for Underhill is tinyurl.com/27npef3x. Any Given Tuesday has created a page at tinyurl.com/2xhyjzhs.
According to the University of the Southwest website, Raines was a junior from Fort Stockton. She graduated from Fort Stockton in 2019 and was majoring in biology.
Price’s GoFundMe page details “he has third degree burns to his body’s better half.” It also states that Price is in critical condition. Price is a freshman from Mississauga, Ontario.
Tipton said the USW family is going through all the stages of grief.
“We’re making sure that our faculty and staff and our students deal with it. I will say that communicating with parents, the families, over the last few days. They’re just amazing people. Their families are amazing. They are resilient. They are supportive, they love USW and they know that we love them,” Tipton said.
Every day, he added, is another step toward recovery.
The Mustang motto is “We run as one.”
“It’s no accident that that’s our motto because that’s who we are. We are a family of Mustangs. We run as one; we run together. When one of us is hurting, all of us are hurting and that’s what we’re going through right now,” Tipton said.
Tipton said there are counselors and a worship team on campus.
Local school districts’ crisis response teams also have responded, Tipton said.
“We have an overabundance of folks just providing services, counseling, support, spiritual support, emotional support to students,” he added.
He added that students are anxious to return from spring break to support their USW family. Tipton said students will be working with the university to coordinate an assembly to memorialize the students.
“We want our on-campus students to be part of that. …,” Tipton said.
But there is nothing definite set yet.
Tipton said it won’t change the way the teams travel in the future. He added that every day is another step toward healing.
A memorial was set up at the golf course where the USW team practices across from the university. Tony and Gina Cruz waited while their daughter Halie, a USW freshman, visited the memorial with her teammates Phillip Lopez and Jonny Flores.
The Cruzes live in Andrews, so they know what the university is going through. Andrews went through the same trauma after a fatal bus-pickup collision killed three and injured 14 in November in Big Spring.
The Andrews High School band director, Darin K. Johns, and Marc Boswell, the bus driver and statistician of the football team, were killed, as well as the driver of the pickup, Nathan Paul Haile, 59, of Midland.
The Cruzes said four golf team members didn’t go the competition Tuesday and two girls went home with their parents afterward.
“They lost teammates, a coach …,” Tony Cruz said.
Cruz said his daughter competed that day. They have a son who runs track for USW.
“We count our blessings every day after that and try to comfort her the best we can,” Tony Cruz said.
“It’s very hard. It’s her first year in college. She’s a freshman so this is not the experiences you’re wanting when you go away from home,” he added.
Halie Cruz went to school in Denver City and played golf there.
There are 14 people on the USW golf team.
“Just losing a teammate is hard and then losing almost a team it’s even harder,” Tony Cruz said.
