A friend of the family said that just three months ago, the 13-year-old Texas boy who was behind the wheel during a deadly high-speed collision in which nine people, including six college golfers, died burned down his family home.
When the spare tire on their 2007 Dodge 2500 blew out and sent the vehicle careening onto the opposite side of a two-lane highway, Ricky Siemens was illegally driving with his father, Heinrich Siemens, 38-year-old.
While traveling at 30 miles per hour, a school bus carrying University of the Southwest students slammed into a Ford Transit vehicle transporting golfers from the university, killing six individuals and injuring two others. Two Canadian players in critical condition were airlifted to hospitals.
According to a friend, the young driver — a member of the Mennonite Evangelical Church in his hometown of Seminole — was also at fault for a deadly collision in December that left his family homeless and killed one of their dogs.
“Just before Christmas, their house burned down … The 13-year-old made some eggs and forgot about it,” said Aganetha, a family friend, to DailyMail.com.
“I couldn’t imagine going through all that and then to have this happen,” she said. “It’s just so sad.”
She stated that there were no injuries in the fire, although an online fundraiser said “they lost one dog in the fire.”
“Their home burned down with all of their personal belongings inside,” stated the fundraiser. The original goal, according to the fundraiser, was $30,000 and only around a third of that was raised.
“Some of the children ran out of the house without shoes. It’s hard to restart for this family of 6,” it said.
Aggie Siemens, the mother of one of the men charged in connection with Ricky’s murder, posted an “in loving memory” tribute to her husband and child on Facebook, where she also changed her status to “widow.”
She connected the death of her dog to the fire at her residence on Dec. 14 in a post looking for technical assistance, stating that her “laptop was in the house during the fire.”
Her son was operating illegally when his car collided with a telephone pole in Texas, where you must be 14 to begin taking classroom lessons for a learner’s license and 15 to obtain that provisional license to drive with an instructor or licensed adult in the vehicle.
While it’s not unusual for children under the age of 16 to drive in that region, “that was dumb” for a 13-year-old to be behind the wheel on a busy two-lane road, according to Gib Stevens, who runs area trucking operations for an oilfield servicing firm.
The NTSB said Thursday it is still aiming to retrieve enough data from the recorders, if any survived, to figure out what occurred.
Although it’s unclear how fast the two cars were going, “this was clearly a high-speed collision,” NTSB vice chairman Bruce Landsberg said.
