Ontario students 'stable' after deadly Texas crash

Two students from Ontario are recovering in hospital following a deadly crash between a pickup truck and a van carrying a college golf team in Texas.

Nine people were killed in the fiery Tuesday night crash and the two Canadians — Dayton Price, 19, of Mississauga, Ont., and Hayden Underhill, 20, of Amherstview, Ont. — suffered critical injuries.

Officials said Thursday that both Ontario students have seen their conditions improve.

"They are both stable and recovering and every day making more and more progress," University of the Southwest Provost Ryan Tipton said.

"One of the students is eating chicken soup," he said, calling their recovery "a game of inches."

Tipton said university president Quint Thurman visited the students' parents at the hospital.

The Canadian students had been aboard the van on their way home from a golf tournament on Tuesday evening when officials said a pickup truck swerved into the opposite lane of traffic, crashing into the van head-on.

Both vehicles burst into flames on the darkened stretch of a two-lane highway, roughly 50 kilometres east of the New Mexico state line.

Six members of the New Mexico college's golf team and a coach died in the collision, as did a 38-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy from the pickup truck. The vice-chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board said the boy was behind the wheel of the truck at the time.

Bruce Landsberg said that although it was unclear how fast the two vehicles were traveling, “this was clearly a high-speed collision."

The surviving students' families have travelled to be with them.

A statement from Underhill's family issued Thursday afternoon said he is "continuing to make progress."

"We would also like to pass on our condolences to family of Coach James and to all the members of the Mustangs family that were lost in this tragic incident," Underhill's parents, Ken and Wendy Underhill, said in the written statement.

"We also are thinking of Dayton and the Price family as he begins his own recovery."

The Texas Department of Public Safety identified the deceased as: Golf coach Tyler James, 26, of Hobbs, N.M.; and players Mauricio Sanchez, 19, of Mexico; Travis Garcia, 19, of Pleasanton, Texas; Jackson Zinn, 22, of Westminster, Colo.; Karisa Raines, 21, of Fort Stockton, Texas; Laci Stone, 18, of Nocona, Texas; and Tiago Sousa, 18, of Portugal.

Also killed were Henrich Siemens, 38, of Seminole County, Texas, and an unidentified 13-year-old boy who were in the 2007 Dodge 2500 pickup.