A National Transportation Safety Board official in Texas said on Thursday that a 13-year-old boy was driving the truck that collided with a pickup truck in West Texas in a fiery crash that killed nine people, including six members of a college golf team and their coach.

The child and a man who was traveling in the truck also died.

Bruce Landsberg, vice chairman of the NTSB board, said the left front tire of the truck, which was a spare tire, also blew out before the collision.

Landsberg said that although it was not clear how fast the two vehicles were traveling, "it is obvious this was a high-speed collision."

 He added that investigators hope to obtain enough information from the vehicle's recorders to better understand what happened.

Explaining that one must be 14 years old in Texas to be ready to start taking classroom courses to obtain a learner's permit and 15 to obtain this temporary license to drive with a coach or a licensed adult in the vehicle. 

For his part, Victor Taylor, sergeant in the Department of Public Safety, said that driving at the age of 13 by a teenager would be against the law. 

The pickup truck crossed into the opposite lane on a dark two-lane highway before directly colliding with a small truck, killing the boy, a man traveling with him, six college students in New Mexico, and a golf coach.

It is not uncommon for people in rural areas of the United States to learn to drive when they are young, but news that a 13-year-old child was behind the wheel in a Texas crash refocused attention on this practice.

Southwest University students, including one from Portugal and one from Mexico, and the coach were returning from a golf tournament when the two vehicles collided Tuesday evening.

 Two Canadian students were transferred to the hospital in critical condition.

Meanwhile, the NTSB sent an investigation team to the crash site in the Andrews area of Texas, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of the New Mexico state line. 

Although the area is rural, its roads can often be busy with traffic related to agriculture and oil and gas development, Southwest University spokeswoman Maria Duarte declined to comment on the NTSB's announcement about the young driver, citing the ongoing investigation.

The golf teams were