Nine Lives Lost on a Dark West Texas Highway: What Happened, Who Is Responsible, and What Families Must Do Now
If you are reading this because someone you love was in that van — a son or daughter, a brother or sister, a teammate, a coach, a friend — we want you to hear something before anything else. What happened on that two-lane highway in Andrews County on the evening of March 15, 2022, was not something you could have prevented, and it was not something anyone in that van did wrong. A pickup truck crossed the centerline into oncoming traffic at highway speed. Both vehicles burned. Nine people are dead. Two young people survived with critical injuries and were flown 110 miles to a trauma center in Lubboch. The National Transportation Safety Board sent a full investigative team because the federal government considers this crash serious enough to study at the national level.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We handle catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across Texas. This page is written for the families of everyone in that van and for anyone who has lost someone in a head-on collision on a rural West Texas highway. Everything here is legal information — not legal advice — and contacting us is free and confidential. If after reading you want to talk, we are available 24 hours a day at 1-888-ATTY-911. We do not charge a fee unless we win your case.
What Happened on Texas Highway 115 in Andrews County
On the evening of March 15, 2022, a 2017 Ford Transit van was traveling west on a two-lane asphalt highway in Andrews County, Texas, approximately 30 miles east of the New Mexico state line. The van was carrying the University of the Southwest men’s and women’s golf teams — student-athletes and their 26-year-old coach — returning home to Hobbs, New Mexico, from a golf tournament at Midland College. The van was towing a box trailer filled with golf equipment. The posted speed limit on this highway is 75 miles per hour.
A 2007 Dodge 2500 pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction crossed into the van’s lane. The two vehicles collided head-on. Both erupted in flames.
Nine people died: six student-athletes between the ages of 18 and 22, their coach, the 38-year-old man in the pickup, and a 13-year-old boy who was also in the pickup. Two Canadian students survived with critical injuries and were airlifted by helicopter to University Medical Center in Lubbock, approximately 110 miles northeast of the crash site.
Authorities had not yet confirmed who was driving either vehicle because of the severity of the crash and the fire that occurred afterward.
That statement — from the Texas Department of Public Safety — is one of the most important facts in this entire case, and we will explain why it matters so much below.
Who Was in the Van
The van carried nine people. Seven did not survive. Two were critically injured.
The deceased from the van include young adults from across the United States and from other countries — a 19-year-old from Mexico, an 18-year-old from Portugal, students from Texas, Colorado, and elsewhere. They were college athletes. One was a freshman majoring in global business management. One had graduated from high school the summer before. Their coach was 26 years old and coached both the men’s and women’s golf teams.
The two survivors are Canadian students, ages 19 and 20, from Ontario. Both were critically injured. Both were stabilized and transported by air ambulance to the trauma center in Lubbock.
We will not name them all here. They are real people whose families are grieving. What matters for the legal analysis is this: six of the nine who died were between 18 and 22 years old, which means each of them had an entire lifetime of earning capacity ahead of them. That fact drives the damages analysis in ways we will explain. And two of the survivors are foreign nationals — which does not reduce their rights under Texas law but does require careful coordination of cross-border estate administration.
The NTSB Investigation: What It Means and What It Does Not Mean
The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a full highway investigation team to the crash site. That decision — to send a federal team — tells you something about how serious this crash is. The NTSB does not investigate every fatal highway collision. When it sends a team, it is because the crash has characteristics that the federal government believes hold lessons for highway safety nationwide.
Here is what the NTSB investigation means for families: the federal government is independently examining vehicle dynamics, human performance factors, roadway environment, and probable cause. The NTSB’s final report will address speed, driver factors, road conditions, and the fire — and its factual findings, while not admissible as direct evidence of negligence in a civil trial, are discoverable and serve as a critical investigative roadmap for any plaintiff’s counsel building a wrongful death case.
Here is what it does not mean: the NTSB does not assign legal liability. It does not determine who pays. It does not represent any family. Its job is to prevent the next crash, not to win compensation for this one. The compensation fight is a separate case in a Texas courthouse, built by the family’s own lawyers and experts, on a parallel track to the federal investigation.
The NTSB’s preliminary report is typically issued within weeks of the crash. The final report can take 12 to 24 months. The docket materials — vehicle inspection reports, highway assessments, witness statements — are released on a staggered schedule. All of these are valuable to a civil case, but none of them are a substitute for the family’s own investigation.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: The Defendant Map
In a crash this complex, the question of who is legally responsible is not a single answer. It is a map. Multiple parties may bear different shares of responsibility, and the law allows a family to pursue all of them simultaneously.
The Pickup That Crossed the Centerline
The primary liability theory for every van-occupant claimant is straightforward: the pickup truck crossed the centerline into oncoming traffic on a two-lane highway with a 75 mph speed limit. That is the core negligence claim — failure to maintain a single lane of travel. Whoever was driving that pickup bears the primary legal responsibility for what happened.
But who was driving? That is the single most consequential unanswered question in this case, and we address it in its own section below.
The Owner of the Pickup
If the person who owned the 2007 Dodge 2500 is different from whoever was driving it, the owner may face a negligent-entrustment claim. Texas law recognizes that a vehicle owner who permits an incompetent, unlicensed, or impaired person to operate their vehicle can be held liable for the consequences. This theory becomes especially powerful if the 13-year-old boy was driving — because a 13-year-old cannot legally hold a driver’s license, and permitting a child to operate a pickup on a 75 mph highway is permissive use of a vehicle by an unlicensed minor.
The University of the Southwest
The van was carrying the university’s golf teams, and the coach was a university employee. If the van was university-owned and the coach was driving in the course and scope of his employment, the university may face vicarious liability — the legal principle that an employer is responsible for the acts of its employee on the job. Beyond that, the university’s own institutional decisions are a discovery target: its team-transport policies, its vehicle maintenance records, its driver-qualification practices, and its decisions about whether a single-vehicle-and-trailer transport of an entire team was an appropriate safety practice. Our wrongful death practice handles exactly these institutional-accountability questions.
Vehicle and Component Manufacturers
Both vehicles burned extensively. If the fire originated from a fuel-system defect, inadequate crash protection, or a design that prevented occupant escape, the manufacturers of the van, the pickup, the trailer, and their component parts may face strict-liability claims for enhanced injuries beyond the impact itself. Post-collision fire is a recognized field of product-liability litigation, and the fire’s origin and propagation are central questions for a forensic fire investigator.
The Road Authority (TxDOT)
Whether the highway’s design, signage, shoulder width, or the absence of center-line rumble strips contributed to the lane departure is a legitimate discovery question. But claims against a government road authority in Texas face significant procedural barriers under the Texas Tort Claims Act — sovereign immunity limits, notice-of-claim deadlines, and damage caps that do not apply to private defendants. This is a secondary theory, pursued only if the evidence supports it, and it carries its own procedural urgency because government-claim deadlines can be far shorter than the general statute of limitations.
The Critical Question: Who Was Driving the Pickup?
Texas authorities have said publicly that they have not yet confirmed who was driving either vehicle because of the severity of the crash and the fire. That single fact reshapes every liability theory, every insurance pathway, and every argument about punitive damages.
If the 38-year-old adult was driving: the primary negligence claim runs against his estate. Toxicology results and cell-phone records become the primary engines for a gross-negligence theory — if intoxication or extreme distraction caused the lane departure, Texas law permits exemplary (punitive) damages upon clear-and-convincing proof, subject to the statutory cap.
If the 13-year-old was driving: the claim shifts to negligent entrustment. A vehicle owner who permits an unlicensed 13-year-old to operate a pickup on a highway is liable not just for the child’s driving but for the adult’s decision to hand over the keys. This theory can expand the claim against the vehicle owner’s insurance and against any adult who permitted the child to drive. It also raises the possibility of permissive-use coverage under the owner’s personal auto policy, which may carry higher limits than a standard liability policy.
This question is answered through forensic evidence — seat-belt position, burn patterns, body position, autopsy findings, and EDR data if the fire spared the modules. It is not answered by assumption, and it is not answered by waiting. The vehicle remnants are the evidence, and they are on a clock.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Your Rights After a Fatal Crash
Texas wrongful death claims are governed by the Texas Wrongful Death Act. The law permits recovery by surviving spouses, children, and parents for the death of a family member caused by another’s wrongful act, neglect, carelessness, unskillfulness, or default. A companion survival action permits the decedent’s estate to recover damages the decedent could have pursued had they survived — including conscious pain and suffering between injury and death.
Who Can File
Only specific family members have standing to bring a wrongful death claim in Texas: the surviving spouse, the children (including adopted children), and the parents. If none of these beneficiaries file within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the decedent’s estate may file the claim on behalf of the beneficiaries — unless the beneficiaries direct the executor not to file.
Unmarried partners, stepchildren, and siblings generally do not have standing under the Texas Wrongful Death Act. This is a hard line that the law draws, and it means that some people who lost someone they deeply loved may not have a legal claim — a truth we state honestly because it is better to know now than to discover it after the deadline has passed.
What Can Be Recovered
Texas wrongful death damages include:
- Loss of the decedent’s earning capacity — the money the deceased family member would have earned over their working lifetime, projected by a forensic economist. For six decedents between 18 and 22 years old, this is a full-career-horizon projection — decades of lost income, benefits, and household services.
- Mental anguish and emotional distress of the surviving family members — the grief, the loss of companionship, the loss of society.
- Loss of companionship and society — the guidance, love, and presence the deceased would have provided.
- Funeral and burial expenses.
Survival action damages include:
- Conscious pain and suffering between injury and death. The fire component may amplify this significantly — if any period of consciousness existed between impact and death, the suffering is compensable.
- Medical expenses incurred before death.
- The decedent’s lost earning capacity during the period between injury and death.
The Two-Year Clock
The statute of limitations for both wrongful death and survival actions in Texas is two years from the date of death. For this crash, that clock started on March 15, 2022. Missing that deadline kills the case — no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how clear the liability. The court never reaches the merits.
There are limited tolling provisions — including for minor beneficiaries in some circumstances — but you should never rely on a tolling exception without confirming it with a lawyer who practices in Texas. The safe assumption is that the two-year clock is running and that it will not stop on its own.
Texas Comparative Fault: The 50% Bar
Texas applies a modified comparative negligence framework with a 50% bar. This means a claimant found to be 50% or less at fault may recover, with their award reduced by their percentage of fault. A claimant found to be more than 50% at fault is barred entirely.
In this case, the defense may attempt to assign some percentage of fault to the van’s driver — arguing speed, inattention, or failure to take evasive action. This is a standard defense strategy in head-on collision cases, and it is exactly why the adjuster works so hard to pin percentage points on the van occupants. Every percentage point assigned to the van is money subtracted from the family’s recovery. But the core facts — a pickup crossing the centerline into oncoming traffic — make the primary liability clear. The defense will fight on the margins, not the centerline.
Exemplary Damages and the Cap
Punitive damages — called exemplary damages in Texas — are available upon clear-and-convincing proof of fraud, malice, or gross negligence. If toxicology results, cell-phone records, or EDR speed data reveal intoxication, extreme distraction, or reckless speed, the pickup driver’s conduct may rise to gross negligence. Texas law caps exemplary damages based on the amount of economic damages and a statutory ceiling on non-economic damages — but the cap does not apply if the defendant was convicted of a felony arising from the same conduct, or in certain other circumstances. The cap is real, but it does not eliminate the punitive-damages engine; it shapes it.
The Stowers Doctrine
Texas has a powerful tool that many states do not: the Stowers doctrine. Under Stowers, a liability insurer has a duty to accept a reasonable settlement demand within policy limits when the claimant’s damages clearly exceed those limits. If the insurer refuses a reasonable demand and the case later results in a verdict above the policy limits, the insurer can be held liable for the excess — its own bad-faith refusal exposed it to an excess judgment.
In a case with nine deaths and two catastrophic injuries, if the pickup’s insurance coverage is limited to standard personal auto policy limits — which can be as low as $30,000 per person in Texas — a properly framed Stowers demand creates enormous pressure on the insurer. If liability is clear and coverage is inadequate, the insurer faces a choice: settle within limits and protect its insured, or refuse and face an excess-judgment bad-faith claim that could expose the insurer to far more than the policy was worth. This is one of the strongest leverage points in Texas wrongful death litigation, and it is a tool our car accident practice uses to maximum effect.
University Transportation Liability: The Institutional Question
The University of the Southwest is a private, Christian college in Hobbs, New Mexico. Its golf teams were returning from a tournament at Midland College — a route that runs through the heart of the Permian Basin oilfield corridor. The van was a 2017 Ford Transit towing a box trailer.
The university’s potential exposure runs through several theories:
Vicarious liability / respondeat superior: If the van was university-owned and the coach was an employee driving in the course and scope of university duties, the university may be liable for any negligence in the van’s operation. This is the most straightforward theory.
Negligent team-transport practices: The university’s policies regarding team travel are a discovery target. Was it appropriate to transport an entire team — both the men’s and women’s golf squads — in a single vehicle towing a trailer? What were the driver-qualification standards? Did the coach hold appropriate licensing for operating a vehicle-trailer combination? What was the fatigue-management protocol for a return trip after a tournament? Were there maintenance records for the van? These are institutional decisions, and they are discoverable.
Negligent vehicle maintenance: If the van had maintenance issues — brakes, tires, lights, trailer securement — the university’s maintenance records will reveal whether it knew or should have known about them.
The university’s insurance coverage is a separate question. Private universities typically carry commercial general liability and automobile liability coverage that can be substantially larger than a personal auto policy. If the university’s transport-negligence theory gains traction, its institutional insurance becomes a meaningful recovery source — one that may far exceed the pickup’s coverage.
The Fire: Crashworthiness and Product Liability
Both vehicles burned. That fact alone raises a specific set of legal questions that go beyond the collision itself.
A post-collision fire is not just an unfortunate consequence. It is a mechanical event with an origin and a cause. A forensic fire investigator examines the burn patterns, the fuel-system components, the electrical systems, and the vehicle architecture to determine where the fire started, how it propagated, and whether a design or manufacturing defect contributed to it.
Federal motor vehicle safety standards govern fuel-system integrity — the rule that a crashed vehicle may not leak more than a specified amount of fuel, because fuel leakage in a crash is the precursor to fire. If a fuel-system defect caused or worsened the fire, the vehicle manufacturer faces a strict-liability claim for the enhanced injuries — the burns, the inhalation injury, the conscious suffering — that occurred beyond the impact itself.
This theory is independent of who caused the collision. The crashworthiness doctrine holds that a manufacturer has a duty to design a vehicle that protects its occupants in a foreseeable collision. A manufacturer cannot defend a fuel-system defect by saying “someone else caused the crash.” The crash was foreseeable. The fire was the defect. The burns are the damages.
For the two survivors who were critically injured and for any decedent who survived the impact but died in the fire, this theory can add a separate defendant with its own insurance tower — the vehicle manufacturer — and can support survival-action damages for conscious pain and suffering that the impact alone would not fully explain.
Evidence That Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section families most need to read, because the evidence in this case is perishable and the clocks are already running.
EDR / Black-Box Data Modules
Both the 2017 Ford Transit and the 2007 Dodge 2500 carry event data recorders — “black boxes” — that capture pre-collision speed, braking input, steering angle, and seat-belt status. This is the foundational accident-reconstruction data set. But the fire may have destroyed or corrupted the stored data. The modules must be extracted and imaged by a qualified forensic engineer before any salvage disposal — and vehicle remnants are typically moved to salvage or impound yards where they can be destroyed within weeks without a preservation order.
Vehicle Fire Debris and Burn Patterns
The physical remnants of both vehicles are the only evidence that can establish fire origin, propagation path, and whether a fuel-system or electrical defect contributed. Once those remnants are scrapped, that evidence is gone forever. A preservation order or protective-order impoundment must be sought immediately.
Toxicology Results
Blood-alcohol and drug screening for both potential drivers is the single most important driver of punitive damages. Biological samples from deceased drivers are collected at autopsy, but hospital labs retain specimens for weeks — not years. If toxicology was drawn, the results and the underlying samples have a limited preservation window.
Cell-Phone Records
Distracted driving is a leading cause of rural lane-departure collisions. If a phone was in use at the moment of impact, the cell-phone carrier’s records will show it. But carriers’ retention periods for detailed usage records range from 90 to 180 days. Preservation letters must be sent to the carriers within 30 days of the crash — after that, the records can be legally overwritten.
NTSB Preliminary Report and Docket Materials
The NTSB’s preliminary report is typically issued within weeks. The final report takes 12 to 24 months. Docket materials — vehicle inspection reports, highway assessments, witness statements — are released on a staggered schedule. These materials are discoverable and serve as a critical investigative roadmap, but they are not a substitute for the family’s own experts examining the evidence before it is gone.
University of the Southwest Records
The university’s vehicle maintenance records, team-transport policies, and driver-qualification files for the coach are discoverable. But institutional records can be lost to personnel turnover, institutional disruption following a mass-casualty event, and routine records-retention schedules. A preservation letter to the university must go out early.
Surveillance and Dash-Camera Footage
The crash corridor runs through the Permian Basin oilfield region. Oilfield operations, commercial properties, and passing vehicles along this corridor may have surveillance or dash-camera footage that captured the pickup’s driving behavior, weave pattern, or speed in the minutes before the lane departure. But CCTV overwrite cycles in commercial and oilfield installations typically range from 7 to 30 days. Canvassing the corridor for footage must occur within two weeks of the crash — after that, the footage is recorded over and gone.
TxDOT Road-Condition Records
Maintenance logs, crash-history data, and road-design records for the incident corridor are retained per government retention schedules. But if a claim against TxDOT is contemplated, the Texas Tort Claims Act imposes notice-of-claim deadlines that can be far shorter than the general two-year statute of limitations. These deadlines create their own procedural urgency separate from the evidence-preservation clock.
Insurance Coverage: Personal Auto vs. Commercial Oilfield Use
The question of what insurance covers this crash is in some ways as important as the question of who is at fault — because a judgment is only worth what can be collected.
The Pickup’s Insurance
If the 2007 Dodge 2500 was insured under a standard personal auto policy, the coverage may be as low as the Texas state minimum — $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident for bodily injury. Against nine death claims and two catastrophic-injury claims, that amount is a fraction of a single night in a trauma center.
But the 38-year-old occupant of the pickup was from Seminole County, Texas — squarely in the Permian Basin oilfield corridor. If the pickup was being used for commercial oilfield service, construction, or agricultural business purposes at the time of the crash, a personal auto policy may not apply at all — but commercial general liability and business auto coverage layers could expand the recovery pool dramatically beyond standard personal auto limits. This is a critical discovery target: was the pickup being used for work? Was it a company vehicle? Was it being used in furtherance of an oilfield or agricultural business?
The University’s Insurance
If the van was university-owned and the university faces a transport-negligence theory, its institutional automobile liability coverage is a separate and potentially much larger recovery source. Private universities typically carry commercial auto coverage with limits far exceeding personal auto policy floors.
The Manufacturers’ Coverage
If a vehicle or component manufacturer faces a crashworthiness/product-liability claim, its insurance tower — and in the case of major manufacturers, its balance sheet — represents a recovery source that is not limited by the auto-policy structure at all.
UM/UIM Coverage
The van itself may carry uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. If the pickup’s insurance is insufficient — which it almost certainly is against nine deaths and two catastrophic injuries — the van’s UM/UIM coverage may provide additional recovery for its occupants. This is a first-party coverage claim that runs alongside the third-party liability claims, and it is a critical piece of the coverage puzzle.
The Coverage Reality
Here is the honest range. If the pickup’s insurance is limited to standard personal auto coverage, no commercial use is established, and the university is not found negligent, the available recovery is constrained to policy limits distributed across nine death claims and two injury claims — a total pool that could be exhausted by a single claim. At the other end, if commercial oilfield use of the pickup triggers layered commercial auto and general-liability coverage, if the university’s institutional insurance is accessed through a transport-negligence theory, and if punitive damages are awarded for gross negligence, the aggregate recovery across all claimants could reach into nine figures. The NTSB’s findings on speed, driver factors, and vehicle fire causation will materially shift this range.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Will Do and How to Counter It
We know the insurance adjuster’s playbook from the inside. Lupe Peña spent years at a national insurance-defense firm before joining this firm — he sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Now he uses that knowledge for injured people. Here is what to expect — and what not to say to an insurance adjuster.
Play 1: The “Just Checking In” Call
Within days of the crash, someone friendly will call a family member to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” — on a recording engineered to be quoted against you later. Every word you say is being transcribed. Every “I’m doing okay” becomes “the family is not seriously affected.” Every speculation about the crash becomes your “statement.”
The counter: Decline the recorded statement. You are not required to give one. Say: “I am not giving a statement at this time. Please contact my attorney.” Then call us.
Play 2: The Fast Check with a Release
A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks — with a release document attached. The release is designed to settle the entire claim for a fraction of its value before the medical results are in, before the autopsy is complete, before the toxicology is back, before the NTSB report is issued. Once you sign, the claim is over. No matter what is discovered later.
The counter: Do not sign anything from an insurance company without having a lawyer read it first. A release that settles a wrongful death claim for $30,000 when the case is worth millions is the adjuster’s single best move — and it only works if you sign it while you are grieving and not yet represented.
Play 3: The Blame-Shift
The defense will look for any fact that can shift a percentage of fault onto the van or its driver. Was the van speeding? Were the headlights on? Was the trailer properly secured? Could the driver have taken evasive action? Every percentage point they can assign to the van reduces the family’s recovery by that fraction.
The counter: This is why the accident reconstruction matters. The EDR data, the skid marks (if any survived the fire), the scene photographs, and the physical damage patterns all tell the true story. A pickup crossing the centerline into oncoming traffic is the core fact. The defense fights on the margins — and the margins are where a reconstructionist earns their fee.
Play 4: The Delay Toward the Deadline
The adjuster may string the claim along — asking for more documentation, requesting more time, promising a decision that never comes — until the two-year statute of limitations is close enough that the family feels pressured to accept whatever is offered. This is not bad luck. It is procedure.
The counter: Know the deadline. The two-year clock started on March 15, 2022. A lawyer who handles wrongful death cases files the lawsuit well before the deadline — and uses the Stowers doctrine to put maximum pressure on the insurer to settle within policy limits before trial becomes necessary.
Play 5: The “The Fire Made It Unsurvivable” Argument
In a crash where both vehicles burned, the defense may argue that the deaths were caused by the fire, not the collision — and that the fire was an unforeseeable consequence that breaks the chain of causation. This is designed to limit damages by eliminating survival-action claims for conscious pain and suffering.
The counter: The crashworthiness doctrine. A manufacturer’s duty extends to foreseeable post-collision fires. The fire was not an intervening cause — it was a foreseeable consequence of a high-speed highway collision, and the injuries it caused are compensable.
What a Case Like This Is Worth: An Honest Assessment
We will not tell you a specific number for your case, because we do not yet know the specific facts that drive it. But we will tell you what drives the number, and we will tell you the range that the forensic evidence supports.
Damages Severity Is Maximal
Nine fatalities. Six of the deceased were between 18 and 22 years old — young adults with full earning-capacity horizons stretching across entire careers. A forensic economist projects lost earnings over a complete working lifetime, adjusted for education, occupation, and inflation. For a college student with a global business management degree, that projection can span 40-plus years of professional earnings, benefits, and household services.
Two critically injured survivors face catastrophic medical expenses: air-ambulance transport, prolonged ICU and burn-unit care, surgical intervention, rehabilitation, and potential long-term disability. A life-care planner builds the cost of future medical needs in today’s dollars. A forensic economist reduces that cost stream to present value. For severe burn injuries with long-term consequences, the lifetime cost can run into the millions.
The Range
At the low end — if the pickup’s insurance is limited to standard personal auto coverage, no commercial use is established, the university is not found negligent, and no product-liability theory succeeds — the available recovery is constrained to policy limits distributed across nine death claims and two injury claims. In that scenario, the total pool could be as low as $3 to $8 million, split among all claimants.
At the high end — if commercial oilfield use of the pickup triggers layered commercial auto and general-liability coverage, if the university’s institutional insurance is accessed through a transport-negligence theory, if a crashworthiness/product-liability claim succeeds against a vehicle manufacturer, and if punitive damages are awarded for gross negligence — the aggregate recovery across all claimants could reach $75 million to $150 million or more.
The NTSB’s findings on speed, driver factors, and vehicle fire causation will materially shift this range. So will the toxicology results. So will the answer to the question of who was driving the pickup.
We will not promise you a number. We will promise you this: every dollar of available coverage will be identified, every theory of liability will be pursued, and every piece of evidence will be preserved. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can guarantee is that we do not get paid unless we win.
Cross-Border Victim Rights: International Families and Texas Courts
Several of the deceased and injured were not U.S. citizens. One was from Mexico. One was from Portugal. Two survivors are from Canada. Their families may be reading this from another country, wondering whether they have the same rights as a Texas family.
They do.
The international status of several decedents does not diminish their Texas-law damages entitlement. A wrongful death claim arising from a crash in Texas is governed by Texas law regardless of the decedent’s nationality. The damages — lost earning capacity, mental anguish, loss of companionship — are calculated under Texas standards.
What the international status does require is careful coordination of cross-border estate administration. A personal representative must be appointed to bring the claim on behalf of the estate and the beneficiaries. For international families, this may require a guardian-ad-litem appointment and coordination between the Texas probate court and the equivalent authority in the home country. This is a standard procedure, not an obstacle — but it takes time, and it should be started early.
If you are a family member reading this from Mexico, Portugal, Canada, or anywhere else outside the United States, your rights in a Texas court are identical to those of a family living next door to the courthouse. The distance does not reduce the claim. It does add a layer of procedural coordination — and that is something we handle.
The Medicine: Burns, Trauma, and the Long Road for Survivors
The two survivors were critically injured in a high-speed head-on collision followed by fire. They were flown by helicopter to University Medical Center in Lubbock — approximately 110 miles from the crash site. That flight distance is not a footnote. It is a clinical fact that matters.
The Trauma-Flight Reality
In rural West Texas, the nearest Level I trauma center is not next door. For Andrews County, the closest comprehensive trauma center is in Lubbock — roughly an hour by air ambulance. Every minute between the crash and the trauma center is a minute in which bleeding, airway compromise, and burn injury progress. The air-ambulance flight itself generates costs that can run into tens of thousands of dollars before the patient ever reaches the hospital door.
Burn Injury Mechanics
When both vehicles burn, the occupants who survive the impact face a second injury: thermal burns and inhalation injury. Burn severity is measured by Total Body Surface Area — the percentage of the body affected — and by depth. A full-thickness (third-degree) burn has killed the nerve endings, which means it may not hurt — a fact that can mask the severity of the injury from bystanders and from the patient themselves. Burn depth “declares” over days; an initial second-degree assessment can convert to third-degree, requiring skin grafting, as the true extent becomes visible.
Inhalation injury — from breathing superheated air and toxic combustion products — is an invisible burn. Singed nasal hairs, soot in the mouth, and a hoarse voice are the warning signs. Inhalation injury independently raises mortality and is an automatic burn-center-referral criterion under the American Burn Association’s published guidelines.
The Parkland Formula and the First Night
For burns exceeding a significant percentage of body surface area, the body leaks fluid until it goes into shock. The Parkland formula calculates the IV fluid volume needed in the first 24 hours — with half due in the first eight hours from the time of the burn, not the time of arrival at the hospital. Every minute the burn sat un-transferred and under-resuscitated is a minute measured against a clock that started the instant the fire touched the skin.
The Long Arc
Severe burns do not end when the patient leaves the hospital. Skin grafting creates two wounds — the burn and the donor site. Scar tissue does not stretch like normal skin, which means that as a young person grows, tightening scars can pull joints out of position and require serial release surgeries over years. Rehabilitation is measured in months, not weeks. The psychological impact — the pain, the disfigurement, the PTSD from being trapped in a burning vehicle — is itself a compensable injury that requires its own treatment plan.
For a brain injury sustained in the impact, the long arc may be different but no less serious — cognitive deficits, memory loss, personality changes, and the challenge of proving an injury that does not always show on a standard CT scan.
A life-care planner builds the cost of all of this — every surgery, every therapy session, every piece of equipment that will be replaced again and again across a lifetime — into a document that a jury can understand and a forensic economist reduces to present value. That number, built from the real medical trajectory, is what the adjuster’s first offer is a fraction of.
The Permian Basin: Why This Highway Is Dangerous
This crash did not happen on a random road. It happened on a specific corridor with specific characteristics that make it dangerous — characteristics that the people who live and work in the Permian Basin know firsthand.
Andrews County sits in the heart of the Permian Basin oilfield region of West Texas. The crash occurred along the corridor connecting the Midland-Odessa metropolitan area to Hobbs, New Mexico — a route heavily traveled by oilfield service vehicles, university traffic, and long-haul commuters. The Permian Basin’s years-long surge in industrial traffic has been the subject of multiple state-level safety studies and has driven increased enforcement attention from Texas DPS commercial vehicle enforcement units.
Rural two-lane highways in this region share a set of characteristics that make cross-over collisions particularly deadly:
- 75 mph posted speeds — which means closing speeds in a head-on collision can exceed 150 mph.
- No center barriers — the painted centerline is the only separation between opposing traffic.
- No center-line rumble strips on many segments — which means a momentary lane departure produces no auditory warning to the driver.
- No artificial lighting — on a dark evening, a driver who drifts across the centerline may not realize it until the headlights of oncoming traffic appear in their lane, and by then, at 75 mph, the closing distance may be too short for evasive action.
- Heavy oilfield traffic — trucks, water haulers, frac-sand transporters, and service vehicles share these corridors with passenger vehicles, creating mixed-traffic hazards.
Our Texas oilfield and commercial truck accident practice has spent years working cases on these exact corridors. We know the roads. We know the traffic. We know what the oilfield industry puts on these highways, and we know what happens when a passenger vehicle meets a pickup that has crossed the centerline at 75 mph in the dark.
The First 72 Hours: A Roadmap for Families
If you are in the first hours or days after losing someone in this crash — or if you are sitting in a hospital in Lubbock while your child fights to survive — here is what we tell every family, in plain language, about what to do and what not to do.
Do This
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Focus on your family first. The medical care, the grief, the arrangements — those come first. Evidence preservation and legal work can proceed in parallel with your focus on the people who need you.
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Decline every recorded statement. From every insurance adjuster, every investigator, every “representative” who calls. Say: “I am not giving a statement at this time.” You are not required to give one. Anything you say can and will be used to reduce your claim.
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Do not sign anything from an insurance company. Not a release, not a settlement, not a medical authorization, not a “proof of loss” form. Nothing. Until a lawyer has read it.
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Preserve everything you have. Your loved one’s phone, their laptop, their personal belongings from the scene, any photographs or videos you have received — keep all of it. Do not delete anything from social media. Do not post about the crash. Do not discuss the crash online.
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Contact a lawyer who handles wrongful death cases in Texas. Not a general practice lawyer. Not a friend who does real estate. A trial lawyer who has built and tried wrongful death cases in Texas courts, who knows the Stowers doctrine, who knows how to send preservation letters that freeze evidence before it disappears, and who can coordinate the forensic investigation in parallel with the NTSB’s work.
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If your loved one was an international student, begin cross-border estate administration. A personal representative must be appointed in Texas to bring the claim. This process takes time and should be started early. An attorney who handles wrongful death cases can coordinate this for you.
Do Not Do This
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Do not accept a quick settlement check. The first offer from an insurance company is designed to close the claim for the lowest possible amount before you understand what it is worth.
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Do not give the insurance company access to your loved one’s medical records. A “medical authorization” form lets the insurer fish through the entire medical history looking for pre-existing conditions to blame.
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Do not wait. Evidence is disappearing on multiple clocks — the cell-phone records in 90 to 180 days, the surveillance footage in 7 to 30 days, the vehicle remnants within weeks, the toxicology samples within months. Every day that passes without a preservation letter is a day the defense gains and the family loses.
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Do not assume the NTSB report will be enough. The NTSB investigation is a roadmap, not a case. The family’s own lawyers and experts must examine the evidence, build the reconstruction, and prepare the case for trial — on a parallel track to the federal investigation.
The Proof Story: How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is how a wrongful death case arising from a crash like this is actually built — not in summary, but as the chronological walk it really is.
Week one: The preservation letters go out. To every insurance carrier — the pickup’s insurer, the university’s insurer, the van’s insurer. To the university itself, demanding that all vehicle maintenance records, team-transport policies, and driver-qualification files be frozen. To TxDOT, demanding that road-condition records and crash-history data for the corridor be preserved. To every cell-phone carrier serving the potential drivers. To every oilfield operation, commercial property, and business along the crash corridor, requesting that surveillance footage from the relevant time period be preserved. To the salvage yard or impound facility holding the vehicle remnants, demanding that nothing be touched, moved, or destroyed.
Weeks two through four: The experts are retained. A PhD-level accident reconstructionist to examine the scene, map the vehicle dynamics, and calculate speeds and forces. A forensic fire investigator — origin and cause — to determine where and why the fire started. A biomedical/crashworthiness engineer to examine the vehicles for design or manufacturing defects. A forensic toxicologist to interpret the toxicology results. For the two surviving students, a life-care planner to build the lifetime cost of their medical needs.
Months one through three: The NTSB preliminary report is reviewed. The EDR data — if it survived the fire — is extracted and imaged. The vehicle remnants are examined under protective order. The toxicology results come back. The cell-phone records arrive — or their absence is documented, which is itself evidence. The scene is re-examined. The witness statements are taken.
Months three through twelve: Discovery proceeds. The depositions begin — the insurance adjuster, the university’s safety director, the responding officers, the medical personnel. The defense experts are deposed. The liability theories are refined based on what the evidence actually shows. The Stowers demand is evaluated and, if appropriate, served on the pickup’s insurer — framing a settlement demand within policy limits that puts the insurer on the hook for any excess verdict.
Year one through two: The case is prepared for trial — or settled, if the evidence and the coverage support a resolution that is fair to the families. Mediation may occur — but not before the core evidence is in hand. Premature mediation without EDR data, toxicology results, and the NTSB preliminary findings undervalues the claims. We do not mediate until we can try the case.
The number at the end — whether it is a settlement or a verdict — is built from all of this. Every document, every deposition, every expert report, every preservation letter is a brick in the wall. The wall is what makes the number real.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the evidence tells, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas (Bar #24007597, licensed November 6, 1998) and the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. He is the managing partner of this firm. He has been in practice since July 18, 2001 — more than 24 years. He does not lose cases because he is outworked, and he does not take cases he cannot win.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the families reading this page. He knows how claims are valued from the inside — the software that discounts pain it cannot see, the IME doctors the insurer picks, the surveillance they run, the recorded-statement scripts they use. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He is a third-generation Texan with family roots to the King Ranch. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas (Bar #24084332, licensed December 6, 2012) and the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas.
We work on contingency. That means we do not charge an hourly fee. We take a percentage of the recovery — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. If we do not win, we do not get paid. The consultation is free. The first phone call costs nothing. We have live staff available 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service.
Our aggregate recoveries exceed $50 million. We have recovered $5 million-plus in a brain-injury settlement, $3.8 million-plus in an amputation settlement, $2.5 million-plus in a truck-crash recovery. These are our cases — not borrowed from another firm, not borrowed from a verdict someone else won. But past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that we have built and won cases at this level, and we know what it takes.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Two years from the date of death. For this crash, the clock started on March 15, 2022. There are limited tolling provisions — including for minor beneficiaries in some circumstances — but you should never rely on a tolling exception without confirming it with a Texas wrongful death attorney. The safe assumption is that the two-year deadline is firm.
Who can file a wrongful death claim in Texas?
Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, only surviving spouses, children (including adopted children), and parents have standing to file. If none of these beneficiaries file within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the estate may file on their behalf. Unmarried partners, stepchildren, and siblings generally do not have standing. If you are unsure whether you qualify, the answer is worth confirming with a lawyer — not guessed at.
Does it matter that some of the victims were from other countries?
No — not for their rights. A wrongful death claim arising from a crash in Texas is governed by Texas law regardless of the decedent’s nationality. The damages are calculated under Texas standards. What the international status does require is careful coordination of cross-border estate administration — appointing a personal representative in Texas, coordinating with authorities in the home country, and ensuring that guardian-ad-litem procedures are properly handled. This is standard, not an obstacle.
What if the insurance company has already contacted me?
Decline the recorded statement. Do not sign anything. Say: “I am not giving a statement at this time. Please contact my attorney.” The adjuster’s first call is designed to gather information that will be used to reduce your claim — not to help you. The friendly tone is procedure, not compassion. This is not cynicism. It is experience.
How much is my case worth?
We cannot answer that without knowing the specific facts. What we can tell you is what drives the number: the age and earning capacity of the deceased, the severity of the survivors’ injuries, the available insurance coverage, whether commercial use of the pickup can be established, whether the university faces liability, whether a product-liability claim against a vehicle manufacturer succeeds, and whether gross negligence supports punitive damages. The range in this case could be as low as $3 to $8 million (if coverage is limited to personal auto policy minimums) or as high as $75 million to $150 million or more (if commercial coverage, university liability, product liability, and punitive damages all align). Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What is the Stowers doctrine and why does it matter?
The Stowers doctrine is a Texas legal principle that requires a liability insurer to accept a reasonable settlement demand within policy limits when the claimant’s damages clearly exceed those limits. If the insurer refuses and the case later results in a verdict above the policy limits, the insurer can be held liable for the excess — its own bad-faith refusal exposed it to an excess judgment. In a case with nine deaths and two catastrophic injuries, Stowers is one of the most powerful tools a plaintiff’s lawyer has to force an insurer to pay its full policy limits rather than gamble at trial.
What happens if the 13-year-old was driving the pickup?
If the 13-year-old was driving, the claim shifts to negligent entrustment — the legal theory that the vehicle owner is liable for permitting an unlicensed, incompetent person to operate the vehicle. A 13-year-old cannot legally hold a driver’s license. Permitting a child to drive a pickup on a 75 mph highway is permissive use of a vehicle by an unlicensed minor, and the vehicle owner’s insurance — and potentially the insurance of any adult who permitted the child to drive — becomes the recovery target. This theory can expand the available coverage beyond what a standard negligence claim against the adult driver would reach.
What is the NTSB investigating and will their report help my case?
The NTSB is independently examining vehicle dynamics, human performance factors, roadway environment, and probable cause. Its final report will address speed, driver factors, road conditions, and the fire. The NTSB’s findings are not admissible as direct evidence of negligence in a civil trial — but its factual findings, witness statements, vehicle inspection reports, and docket materials are discoverable and serve as a critical investigative roadmap. The NTSB does not assign legal liability and does not represent any family. The compensation case is separate, built by the family’s own lawyers and experts.
Can I sue the university?
Potentially, yes — depending on the facts. If the van was university-owned and the coach was an employee acting within the course and scope of his employment, the university may face vicarious liability. Beyond that, the university’s team-transport policies, vehicle maintenance practices, and driver-qualification standards are all discovery targets. If the university’s institutional decisions contributed to the harm — for example, by transporting an entire team in a single vehicle towing a trailer, without adequate driver-qualification or fatigue-management protocols — the university’s own insurance coverage becomes a recovery source that may far exceed the pickup’s coverage.
What if the pickup driver was working for an oilfield company?
If the 2007 Dodge 2500 was being used for commercial oilfield service, construction, or agricultural business purposes at the time of the crash, commercial general liability and business auto coverage layers could dramatically expand the recovery pool beyond standard personal auto policy limits. The deceased adult occupant was from Seminole County, Texas — squarely in the Permian Basin oilfield corridor. Whether the vehicle was being used for work at the time of the crash is a critical discovery target that can reshape the entire coverage picture.
How do I preserve evidence before it disappears?
The single most important step is to have a lawyer send preservation letters — immediately. The letters go to every insurance carrier, the university, TxDOT, cell-phone carriers, oilfield operations along the corridor, and the facility holding the vehicle remnants. These letters create a legal duty to preserve evidence. If evidence is destroyed after a preservation letter is received, the court can impose sanctions — including an adverse-inference instruction telling the jury to assume the lost evidence was as bad for the defense as the plaintiff says it was. Every day without a preservation letter is a day the defense gains.
How much does it cost to hire a wrongful death lawyer?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — we do not charge an hourly fee. We take a percentage of the recovery (33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial). If we do not win, we do not get paid. The consultation is free. The first phone call costs nothing. You can reach us 24 hours a day at 1-888-ATTY-911.
If You Are Reading This at 2 A.M.
If you are reading this in the middle of the night — from a hospital waiting room in Lubbock, from a kitchen table in Hobbs, from a home in Mexico or Portugal or Canada — we want you to know one more thing before you close this page.
The people in that van were someone’s whole world. They were 18 and 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 years old. They had just finished a golf tournament. They were riding home. And a pickup truck came across the centerline in the dark, and everything changed.
The law cannot bring them back. What the law can do is hold the people responsible accountable, force the insurance companies to pay what the claim is actually worth, and build a financial foundation for the families who will spend the rest of their lives without the people they lost. That is not a small thing. It is not a replacement. But it is real, and it matters, and it is what the civil justice system exists to do.
If you want to talk — not to hire a lawyer, not to sign anything, just to talk to someone who knows what this road looks like and what the fight ahead involves — call us. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Legal Emergency Lawyers. We have been in practice since 2001. We are in Houston, Austin, and Beaumont, and we take wrongful death cases across Texas. Contact us any hour of any day.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. You are not obligated to hire us by calling.