More details are emerging about this week's fatal crash on a two-lane Texas road that claimed nine lives. On Thursday, authorities revealed that the driver of a pickup that slammed into a van of college students was only 13 years old. On Friday, a local pastor said the boy was in the truck with his father, 38-year-old Henrich Siemens, reports NBC News. Both the boy, who has not been identified, and his father died in the crash, as did six college students from New Mexico and their golfing coach. Authorities still have not determined why the boy was behind the wheel, but they suspect he lost control of the truck when a front tire blew—it was a spare tire—and hit the van head-on. The speed limit on the road is 75mph.
Mennonite Evangelical Church Seminole Pastor Jake Fehr tells NBC that the Siemens family had more tragedy late last year with a house fire. “The whole house burned down, they lost everything in that home,” he said. The boy had siblings, but details have not been released. Siemens' widow, Agatha, posted a Facebook tribute to the "love of my life," per NBC. While it is illegal in Texas for a 13-year-old to be driving on public roads, the AP notes that it's not uncommon for children in rural communities throughout the US to learn how to drive around their homes at even younger ages.
Still, "for a 13-year-old to be driving that road, that was dumb,” says 57-year-old Gib Stevens of Hobbs, Texas. Stevens himself recalls learning to drive on farm roads around the age of 12, but the accident occurred on a much different kind of road, one he is familiar with as head of trucking operations for an oil-field servicing company. “These roads are all oil traffic," he says. (Read tributes to the college students who were killed.)
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