Midland MVA: The Andrews County Head-On That Killed Nine — Texas Law, Evidence, and What Families Can Do
If you are reading this because someone you love was in that van on the night of March 15, 2022 — or because you survived it and are living with what happened on that two-lane highway in Andrews County — we are going to tell you the truth about what the law says, what the evidence shows, and what the next steps look like. Not a sales pitch. Not a brochure. The same analysis we would give you across a kitchen table at two in the morning, because that is when people in your position are usually awake, looking for answers, and being circled by insurance adjusters who sound friendly and are not.
Nine people died on that road. Six were college students barely beginning adult lives. One was their coach. One was a thirteen-year-old boy who should never have been behind the wheel of a 2007 Dodge 2500 pickup on a 75-mile-per-hour highway in the dark. And one was the thirty-eight-year-old man who let him drive. Two more students survived, critically injured, and were flown by helicopter to a trauma center more than a hundred miles away. Both vehicles burned. The road is in the heart of the Permian Basin, surrounded by oilfield traffic that the people who live and work there have long known makes these highways dangerous in a way that city roads are not.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle wrongful death cases and catastrophic car crash cases in Texas. We are writing this as the trial team that knows this part of the state, the law that governs what happened, and the playbook the insurance companies are already running on families who have not called a lawyer yet. Everything in this page is legal information, not legal advice. But it is the kind of legal information that most families never receive until it is too late to act on it. That is the gap we are here to close.
What Happened on That Darkened Highway
Here is what public reporting and the investigating agency have established about the crash, stripped of speculation and stated as fact.
At approximately 8:17 p.m. on Tuesday, March 15, 2022, a 2007 Dodge 2500 pickup truck was traveling on a two-lane highway in Andrews County, Texas, roughly thirty miles east of the New Mexico state line. The pickup was driven by a thirteen-year-old boy. The left front tire of the pickup — which was a spare tire — blew out before the collision. After the blowout, the pickup crossed into the opposite lane of traffic and struck a 2017 Ford Transit van head-on. The van was carrying members of the University of the Southwest golf teams and was towing a box trailer. Both vehicles burst into flames. The speed limit at the crash site is 75 miles per hour. The vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board described the collision as “clearly a high-speed collision.”
Nine people died. Six students — freshmen and juniors, some of whom had just left home for the first time, some who had traveled from other countries to play golf at a small Christian college in Hobbs, New Mexico. Their coach. The thirteen-year-old driver. And the thirty-eight-year-old man riding in the pickup with him. Two students survived, both critically injured, both Canadian. They were flown by helicopter to University Medical Center in Lubbock — the nearest Level I trauma center, more than a hundred miles from where the crash happened.
The teams had been playing in a tournament at a golf course in Midland. They were on their way home to Hobbs when the pickup crossed the center line.
This is the Permian Basin. The roads here carry a volume of oilfield traffic that people who do not live here cannot imagine — water haulers, frac sand trucks, crude oil tankers, pump trucks, equipment transport, all running on two-lane highways built for a fraction of the load they now carry. One oilfield trucking operator who spoke to reporters about the crash said it plainly: “For a thirteen-year-old to be driving that road, that was dumb.” He was right. But the danger of that road did not begin with a thirteen-year-old behind the wheel, and it will not end when the investigation closes.
Texas Wrongful Death Law: Who Can Recover, How Long They Have, What They Can Claim
Texas law treats a death caused by someone else’s negligence as two separate legal claims, not one. Understanding the difference is the first thing that separates a family that recovers what the law allows from a family that recovers a fraction of it.
Wrongful death is the claim that belongs to the surviving family. Under the Texas Wrongful Death Act, the people who may bring this claim are the surviving spouse, the surviving children, and the surviving parents of the person who died. Each has their own claim. They can bring it jointly or individually. If none of them brings a claim within three months of the death, the executor or administrator of the deceased person’s estate can bring it — unless the family specifically directs the executor not to. The damages in a wrongful death claim include the lost earning capacity and financial support the deceased would have provided, the lost care, maintenance, advice, and counsel the family would have received, and the mental anguish, emotional pain, and loss of companionsion the family suffers.
Survival action is the claim that belongs to the estate of the person who died. It carries forward the claim the deceased person would have had if they had survived — the pain and suffering they experienced between the injury and death, the medical expenses incurred before death, and in some cases punitive damages. The survival claim is separate from the wrongful death claim, and a family that walks through only one door leaves money on the table.
Both claims are governed by a two-year statute of limitations under Texas law. The clock starts on the date of death for the wrongful death claim and on the date of injury for the survival action. Two years sounds like a long time when you are standing at a funeral. It is not. Evidence disappears on its own schedule, not the court’s. Insurance companies use every one of those days. We have seen families who waited eighteen months to call a lawyer, only to learn that the black-box data, the tire evidence, and the dashcam footage were all gone — legally erased — before anyone asked for them.
Texas follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. What that means in plain language: if the person who was hurt or killed was partly at fault for what happened, their recovery is reduced by their share of fault — but only up to 50 percent. If they are found to be 51 percent or more at fault, the claim is barred entirely. Every percentage point the defense can pin on the injured person is money subtracted from the recovery, which is exactly why the insurance company works so hard to shift blame. In this crash, the at-fault party is the pickup truck — the thirteen-year-old who crossed the center line and the adult who allowed him to drive. But the defense will look for every percentage point it can find, and the fact that some van passengers were not wearing seatbelts is a fact the defense will try to use. More on that below, because how that fact is handled is one of the things that separates a lawyer who has done this from one who has not.
Texas does not cap non-economic damages in motor vehicle wrongful death cases. There is no statutory ceiling on what a jury can award for mental anguish, loss of companionship, or pain and suffering in a case like this. That matters enormously, because the largest part of what a family loses is not a paycheck — it is the person. The law recognizes that, and in a general negligence case (as opposed to a medical malpractice case, where Texas does impose caps), a jury is free to value it honestly.
Negligent Entrustment: When an Adult Lets a Child Drive
This is the legal theory that sits at the center of this case, and it is the one that separates a tragedy from a case.
In Texas, a person must be fourteen years old to begin classroom instruction for a learner’s license and fifteen to receive a provisional license that allows driving with a licensed adult. A thirteen-year-old cannot legally operate a vehicle on a public road in Texas. Period. There is no exception for rural areas, no exception for oilfield families, no exception for “he’s been driving the ranch truck since he was ten.” The law is clear.
“When it comes to public roads, the laws are pretty clear: You can’t be out there until you’re legally eligible.” — William Van Tassel, AAA’s manager of driver training programs, as quoted in public reporting on the crash.
Negligent entrustment is the doctrine that holds a person responsible when they give a dangerous instrument to someone they know — or should know — is not competent to use it safely. Handing the keys of a 2007 Dodge 2500 to a thirteen-year-old and letting him drive on a 75-mile-per-hour two-lane highway in the dark is not a parenting choice. It is an act of entrustment that foreseeably endangered everyone on that road, including the six students and the coach who were driving home from a golf tournament.
The elements of negligent entrustment in Texas require showing that the entrustor (the adult) knew or should have known that the person receiving the instrument (the thirteen-year-old) was likely to use it in a way that created unreasonable risk of harm. A thirteen-year-old’s legal inability to drive, combined with a 75-mile-per-hour highway, combined with darkness, combined with a vehicle that had a spare tire on its front left wheel — each of these facts builds the foreseeability argument. The adult did not need to intend harm. He needed only to create a situation where harm was the foreseeable result.
The adult who allowed the child to drive also died in the crash. That does not extinguish the claim against him. In Texas, a claim survives the death of the tortfeasor. The claim is brought against his estate. The estate’s assets, and any insurance policy that covers the vehicle or the driver, become the source of recovery. The estate may be modest — a thirty-eight-year-old man from a small town in the Permian Basin may not have deep assets — but the auto liability insurance on the vehicle is the first layer, and the analysis does not stop there.
The Spare Tire Blowout — Product Liability and Maintenance Negligence
The NTSB’s vice chairman revealed a critical fact: the left front tire of the pickup was a spare, and it blew out before the collision. That single fact opens a second front of liability that has nothing to do with the thirteen-year-old’s driving or the adult’s decision to let him drive.
A tire blowout on a 2007 Dodge 2500 — a heavy-duty pickup that weighs over 6,000 pounds empty and can carry far more — at highway speed can cause immediate loss of directional control. The left front tire is particularly dangerous because when it deflates, the vehicle pulls toward the side of the blowout, which is the oncoming traffic lane on a two-lane highway. A driver who is thirteen years old and has no training has essentially no chance of maintaining control in that scenario. An experienced adult driver would struggle.
The spare tire raises a cascade of questions that a proper investigation answers:
Was it a full-size spare or a temporary “donut” spare? Temporary spare tires are designed for low-speed, short-distance emergency use — typically limited to 50 miles per hour and 50 miles of travel. Using one at 75 miles per hour on a highway is operating outside its design parameters. If a temporary spare was being used as a regular tire at highway speed, the failure was foreseeable.
How old was the tire? Every tire sold in the United States carries a DOT Tire Identification Number. For tires manufactured since 2000, the last four digits indicate the week and year of manufacture. A 2007 vehicle’s spare tire could have been fifteen years old by the date of the crash — if it was the original spare. Multiple major automakers recommend replacing tires at six years regardless of tread depth, and many say ten years is an absolute ceiling, because rubber degrades over time even when the tire is not being driven. An aged spare that has sat in the back of a truck for a decade and a half may look fine and fail catastrophically the first time it is loaded at highway speed.
Was it properly inflated? Spare tires are frequently underinflated because they are out of sight and out of mind. An underinflated tire at highway speed generates excess heat, which degrades the rubber and the internal structure, and can lead to a blowout even in a tire that is not old.
Was the tire defective? If the tire failed despite being properly sized, properly inflated, and within its service life, the question becomes whether the tire itself was defectively designed or manufactured. That is a products liability claim — a separate cause of action against the tire manufacturer that does not depend on the driver’s negligence at all. Tire blowouts are a specific type of crash we have analyzed, and the physical evidence — the tire itself, the remaining tread, the failure pattern — is what proves or disproves the theory. But that evidence has to be preserved before the vehicle is scrapped or the tire is discarded.
Who maintained the vehicle? If the spare was used because a regular tire had failed, and the replacement was improper or the spare was known to be compromised, the person or shop that maintained the vehicle may carry separate liability. This is a maintenance negligence theory, and it runs alongside the negligent entrustment theory against the adult and the potential product liability theory against the tire manufacturer.
The tire is evidence. It is physical evidence that must be located, photographed in place, removed under chain of custody, and examined by a tire failure analyst. If it is destroyed, lost, or allowed to degrade, the product liability case may die with it. This is why a preservation letter — demanding that the vehicle, the tire, and all maintenance records be frozen — has to go out immediately, not after the NTSB finishes its work.
The NTSB Investigation: What It Can and Cannot Do for Your Case
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating this crash. That is unusual for a highway collision — the NTSB does not investigate every fatal wreck, but the mass-casualty nature of this one and the involvement of a university team triggered their involvement. The NTSB is a federal investigative body whose purpose is to improve transportation safety, not to assign legal blame or determine who pays.
This distinction matters enormously for families, and it is one of the most misunderstood things about any crash the NTSB touches.
The NTSB’s probable cause finding will not be admissible in your civil case. Federal law — specifically 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b) — provides that no part of an NTSB report related to an accident may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report. The NTSB’s conclusion about what caused the crash — the “probable cause” determination that news organizations will quote as the official verdict — is locked out of the courtroom. A family still has to prove what happened with their own experts, their own evidence, and their own investigation.
What the NTSB’s investigation does produce is factual evidence that may be usable. The NTSB’s factual report — distinct from the probable cause analysis — contains measurements, photographs, vehicle examination findings, and data from recorders. Individual NTSB investigators can testify to factual observations they made during the investigation, even though the board’s conclusions are off-limits. The line between usable facts and inadmissible conclusions is not always clean, and a lawyer who does not understand this distinction will either over-rely on the NTSB report (and get it excluded) or under-use the factual findings (and miss valuable evidence).
The NTSB does not work for the families. Its investigators are not building a case for the plaintiffs. They are building a safety record for the public. Their timeline is their own — a final report can take twelve to twenty-four months. Their recommendations may lead to regulatory changes that help prevent the next crash. But they will not preserve evidence for your civil case, they will not notify your lawyer when the tire is about to be released, and they will not send you a copy of their findings before they publish them to the world. The families’ investigation has to run in parallel, not in the NTSB’s wake.
The Texas Department of Public Safety also investigated this crash, as the primary law enforcement agency. The DPS crash report (the CR-3) is a separate record from the NTSB’s work, and its admissibility in civil proceedings is governed by different rules. The DPS report contains officer observations, measurements, and crash diagramming. Its opinions about fault may be contested, but its factual content is generally more accessible to the civil case than the NTSB’s analysis.
The Defendant Map — Who Is Responsible and Where the Money Is
A crash that kills nine people and critically injures two more is not a single claim against a single driver. It is a matrix of defendants, each with different insurance coverage, different legal theories, and different defenses. Identifying every responsible party — and every source of recovery — is the work that determines whether a family receives full compensation or a fraction of it.
The estate of the adult who allowed the child to drive. This is the primary defendant. The negligent entrustment theory runs against the person who handed the keys to a thirteen-year-old. His estate is liable. The auto liability insurance on the 2007 Dodge 2500 is the first layer of coverage. Texas minimum auto insurance provides $30,000 per person for bodily injury, $60,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage. With nine deaths and two catastrophic injuries, $60,000 per accident is not a recovery — it is an insult. Even if the driver carried higher limits — $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident, or a $1 million policy — the mathematics of dividing that among eleven claimants (nine estates and two survivors) produces a number that bears no relationship to what was lost. This is why the analysis cannot stop at the at-fault driver’s insurance.
The estate of the thirteen-year-old driver. A minor’s estate can be liable for the torts the minor committed. In practice, the recovery against a child’s estate is usually limited to available insurance, because a thirteen-year-old has no assets of his own. The same auto policy that covers the vehicle likely covers the minor as a permissive user, so this defendant’s coverage may fold into the same policy as the adult’s.
The tire manufacturer. If the spare tire that blew out was defectively designed or manufactured, the tire manufacturer is a separate defendant with its own insurance and its own exposure. Product liability claims against major tire manufacturers can reach coverage that dwarfs a personal auto policy. But this theory requires expert analysis of the tire itself — which must be preserved.
The vehicle owner. If the 2007 Dodge 2500 was owned by someone other than the adult who was in it — a family member, an employer, a business — that owner may carry separate liability for negligent maintenance, negligent entrustment, or under a family-purpose doctrine. Identifying the registered owner through the title and registration records is a first-week task.
Underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage. This is the coverage that most families do not know about and that the insurance company will not volunteer. If the at-fault driver’s insurance is insufficient — and in a nine-fatality crash, it will be insufficient — the victims’ own insurance policies may provide underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage that stacks on top of the at-fault policy. The university’s commercial auto policy on the van may carry substantial UM/UIM coverage. The victims’ personal auto policies, or their families’ policies, may also provide coverage. Tracing every policy is its own investigation, and it is the investigation that often determines whether a family can actually fund a life-care plan or is left with a fraction of what the loss is worth.
The university’s insurance. The van was a university vehicle. The university’s commercial auto policy provides coverage for the vehicle and its occupants. This is not a claim against the university as a wrongdoer — the university’s team was the victim here. But the university’s policy is a source of recovery, particularly through its UM/UIM provisions, and in some cases through its medical payments coverage or its general liability policy. Understanding the university’s coverage tower is critical, and it requires sending a preservation demand to the university’s risk management office and its insurer.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists and How Fast It Disappears
Every piece of evidence in a crash case is on a timer. Some timers are set by federal regulation. Some are set by company policy. Some are set by the simple physics of a vehicle sitting in a tow yard, accruing fees, waiting to be crushed. The families’ ability to prove what happened depends on whether someone moves to freeze the evidence before the timers expire.
The vehicle event data recorder (EDR). The 2017 Ford Transit van, as a vehicle manufactured after September 1, 2012, is subject to federal EDR standards under 49 CFR Part 563. Its recorder captured, in the seconds before impact, the van’s speed, brake application, throttle position, seatbelt status, and the change in velocity (delta-V) at impact — the single best measure of crash severity. The 2007 Dodge 2500 may also have an EDR, though pre-2012 vehicles were not subject to the same standardized requirements. The NTSB said investigators hoped to retrieve data from the recorders “if they survived” the fire. If the modules survived, the data is there. If the vehicles are scrapped before the data is downloaded, the evidence is gone. EDR data for deployment events (where airbags fired) is supposed to be locked by federal regulation — but a vehicle that is crushed or sent to a salvage yard destroys the module regardless. A preservation letter demanding that both vehicles be held and not altered, crushed, or disposed of is the first document that goes out.
The tire. The spare tire that blew out is the single most important piece of physical evidence in the product liability analysis. Its DOT Tire Identification Number reveals its manufacture date. Its failure pattern — tread separation, sidewall blowout, bead failure — tells a tire analyst what happened and why. It must be photographed in place before it is removed, removed under documented chain of custody, and stored in a controlled environment. If it is discarded, allowed to degrade, or “lost” in the tow yard, the product liability claim against the manufacturer may become impossible to prove.
The crash scene. Skid marks, gouge marks in the pavement, debris field patterns, the final resting positions of both vehicles, and the point of impact are all evidence that can be measured and reconstructed. The Texas DPS crash report documents some of this, but a forensic reconstructionist working for the families produces a far more detailed analysis. Scene evidence degrades quickly — tire marks fade, pavement is repaved, debris is cleared. A scene inspection should happen within days, not months.
The vehicles themselves. Both vehicles burned. But “burned” does not mean “destroyed as evidence.” The structural deformation of each vehicle, the fuel system components, the seatbelt assemblies, the seating positions, and the EDR modules may all survive a fire and remain analyzable. A fire-damaged vehicle still tells a story — but only if it is preserved and examined before it is scrapped. Tow yards charge storage fees, and without a preservation letter, an insurance company will authorize the vehicle’s disposal to stop the fees. That authorization is the death of the evidence.
The NTSB factual docket. As the NTSB investigation progresses, it produces a public factual file — witness statements, vehicle examination reports, the crash survivability analysis, and any recorder data. This file is published publicly, but it updates as the investigation moves from preliminary to final. A final report can take twelve to twenty-four months. The families’ lawyers should be monitoring the docket and pulling every document as it is released.
Medical records for the survivors. The two critically injured students who were flown to UMC Lubbock have medical records that document the full extent of their injuries — imaging, surgical reports, intensive care notes, rehabilitation assessments. These records are the foundation of the survival action and the catastrophic injury claim. Hospital records are retained on a schedule, but the families should ensure that the complete record — every scan, every operative note, every nursing flow sheet — is requested and preserved. Hospital liens may attach to any recovery under Texas law, and understanding the lien structure is part of valuing the case honestly.
The DPS crash report. The Texas Department of Public Safety’s crash report is typically available within days to weeks of the crash. It contains the investigating officer’s diagram, measurements, witness identifications, and initial assessment. It is not the final word — officers make mistakes, and their opinions about fault are contestable — but it is the baseline document that every lawyer and every insurance adjuster starts from.
Dashcam and surveillance video. If either vehicle had a dashcam, if any oilfield truck in the area had a camera that captured the highway, if any nearby facility had surveillance that reached the road — that footage may exist and may be overwriting itself on a loop of days or weeks. A preservation letter to every entity that might have footage is a first-week task.
The insurance clock. Here is the part the adjuster will never tell you. The at-fault driver’s insurance company owes a duty to its policyholder, not to you. Within days of the crash, an adjuster will be on the phone with the families, sounding sympathetic, asking for recorded statements, offering to “help with expenses.” Everything said to the adjuster is being recorded and analyzed for ways to reduce the company’s exposure. The adjuster’s job is to close the claim for the smallest amount possible, as fast as possible, before the family has a lawyer. The preservation of evidence and the protection of the family’s rights are not the adjuster’s job — they are the lawyer’s.
The Medicine: What a 75 MPH Head-On Does to the Human Body
We are going to talk about what happened to the people in that van, because the medicine is the proof of what was lost, and the proof of what was lost is the measure of what the case is worth. We are going to describe it clinically, not cinematically, because the people in that van were real and their families may read this.
The physics. Kinetic energy is proportional to mass times velocity squared. A vehicle traveling at 75 miles per hour carries more than four times the destructive energy of the same vehicle at 35 miles per hour. In a head-on collision, the closing speed is the sum of both vehicles’ speeds — if both were traveling at or near the speed limit, the closing speed could approach 150 miles per hour. The change in velocity (delta-V) that each vehicle undergoes at impact depends on the mass ratio of the two vehicles and the angle of impact. The delta-V is the single best predictor of occupant injury severity. A high delta-V in a head-on collision at highway speed produces forces that the human body was not designed to survive.
The mechanism of fatal injury. In a high-speed head-on crash, the primary mechanisms of death are traumatic brain injury from the brain impacting the inside of the skull, cervical spine fracture from the head whipping forward and back, internal organ rupture from the seatbelt or steering column, and aortic transection from the deceleration forces. When a