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A 13-year-old was driving a pickup truck that crashed right into a van carrying members of a New Mexico college’s golf groups, killing 9 folks in West Texas on Tuesday evening, officers stated Thursday.
An early investigation revealed that the truck had a spare wheel rather than its left entrance tire, in keeping with Nationwide Transportation Security Board Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg. That spare tire appeared to have failed, inflicting the truck to swerve in entrance of the van.
“A 13-year-old youngster was behind the wheel of the pickup truck,” Landsberg stated throughout a Thursday information convention.
The wheel didn’t look like an emergency-use “doughnut” spare, however was just like the remainder of the tires. The left entrance tire had a metal rim that remained intact whereas the three different tires have been extensively broken.
The van was carrying members of the College of the Southwest males’s and ladies’s golf groups, who have been touring for a match.
Six of the student-athletes have been killed within the crash, together with a coach. The 13-year-old pickup truck driver and a passenger, 38-year-old Henrich Siemens, have been additionally killed within the crash.
The Texas Division of Public Security recognized the fatally injured coach and group members Wednesday as Tyler James, 26; Mauricio Sanchez, 19; Travis Garcia, 19; Jackson Zinn, 22; Karisa Raines, 21; Laci Stone, 18; and Tiago Sousa, 18.
Dayton Value, 19, and Hayden Underhill, 20, the 2 different folks within the van, have been listed in important situation. Landsberg didn’t have an replace on their situation Thursday.
The Texas Division of Public Security made the dedication that the kid was driving primarily based on the identification of the stays within the driver seat following a post-crash hearth, Landsberg stated.
Landsberg famous that the NTSB is an impartial company that may examine the crash however will not be concerned with potential prison expenses.
NTSB investigators are nonetheless wanting into whether or not the automobile recorders survived the crash to obtain information on how briskly they have been going previous to the accident. The velocity restrict on the freeway is 75 mph.
“It was very clearly a high-speed, head-on collision between two heavy automobiles,” Landsberg stated. “Now we have actually hundreds of images that have been taken by the assorted first responders, and there’s no query in regards to the pressure of influence.”
A number of passengers within the van appeared to not have been sporting seatbelts throughout the crash, and not less than one was ejected from the automobile throughout the collision.
The NTSB preliminary report can be launched in roughly two to a few weeks, however a ultimate report won’t be launched for 12 to 18 months, in keeping with Landsberg.
Highways see a uniquely excessive quantity of fatalities, with Landsberg noting that the variety of folks killed each two days on the nation’s highways is “the equal of a Boeing 737.”
“The carnage on our highways exceeds some other mode of transportation,” he stated. “In no different mode would we tolerate 100-plus fatalities each day. … So we expect it’s excessive time we take our driving a bit extra significantly.”
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