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The 13-year-old Texas boy who was behind the wheel during a horror high-speed crash that killed nine people — including six college golfers — burned down his family home just three months ago, a friend of the family said.
Ricky Siemens was illegally driving when he died alongside his dad Heinrich Siemens, 38, when the spare tire on their 2007 Dodge 2500 blew and sent it crashing into the opposite side of a two-lane highway.
It crashed head-on with a Ford Transit van carrying golfers from the University of the Southwest, six of who died alongside their 26-year-old coach, while two Canadian players were airlifted in critical condition.
The young teen driver — a member of the Mennonite Evangelical Church in his hometown Seminole — was also behind a devastating accident in December that left his family homeless and killed one of their dogs, a friend said.
“Just before Christmas, their house burned down… The 13-year-old made some eggs and forgot about it,” the family friend, Aganetha, told DailyMail.com.
“I couldn’t imagine going through all that and then to have this happen,” she told the outlet. “It’s just so sad.”
She said no one was hurt in the blaze, although an online fundraiser said that “they lost one dog in the fire.”
“Their home burned down with all of their personal belongings inside,” said the fundraiser, which sought $30,000 and raised just over a third of that.
“Some of the children ran out of the house without shoes. It’s hard to restart for this family of 6,” it said.
Ricky’s mom, Aggie Siemens, posted an “in loving memory” tribute to her husband and son on Facebook, where she also changed her status to “widow.”
She had referred to the house fire in a post seeking tech help on Dec. 14, noting that her “laptop was in the house during the fire.”
Her son was driving illegally at the time of the crash in the Lone Star State, where you have to be 14 to start taking classroom courses for a learner’s license and 15 to receive that provisional license to drive with an instructor or licensed adult in the vehicle.
While it’s not unusual for young teens to drive in that region, “that was dumb” for a 13-year-old to be behind the wheel on a busy two-lane roadway, said Gib Stevens, who leads area trucking operations for an oilfield servicing company.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Thursday it still hopes to retrieve enough information from the vehicle’s recorders, if they survived, to understand what happened.
Although it was unclear how fast the two vehicles were traveling, “this was clearly a high-speed collision,” NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said.
With Post wires
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