More than $200000 raised on GoFundMe for Ontario students injured in Texas collision - The Globe and Mail

A memorial erected in honor of the University of the Southwest golf teams car wreck March 17, 2022 at the Rockwind Community Links in Hobbs, N.M.Eli Hartman/The Associated Press

Donations are pouring in to help the families of two university students from Ontario who were gravely injured this week in a head-on crash in Texas that killed nine others.

On Friday more than $200,000 had been raised in separate accounts on the crowd-funding platform GoFundMe for Dayton Price of Mississauga and Hayden Underhill of Amherstview, near Kingston.

“We are overwhelmed with the response,” said Antoine Possik, a close friend of the Price family, who helped established Dayton’s account. “People are really showing what it means to be Canadian.”

The golfers at the University of the Southwest in Hobbs, N.M., were the only ones to survive when the passenger van in which they were riding was struck by a pickup truck that crossed the centre line at 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday.

Six members of the university men’s and women’s golf teams, the first-year coach who was driving the school van and both occupants of the pickup truck died in the accident on a two-lane highway about 50 kilometres east of the New Mexico state line.

Nine dead in Texas crash involving U. of Southwest golf teams

Two Ontario students ‘stable’ after deadly crash in Texas

At a news conference on Thursday, the vice-chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said the truck was being driven by a 13-year-old. Its left front tire, a spare, blew before the vehicle veered into the oncoming lane.

In Texas, one must be 15 to get a learner’s licence and drive with an instructor or licenced adult.

The golf team was returning from a tournament in Midland, Tex., when the high-speed collision occurred.

The Price family received a call in the early morning hours on Wednesday alerting them to the catastrophe. The boy’s father, Darren Price, a youth coach in the Greater Toronto Hockey League, his mother, Ornella, and sibling Noella left for Texas almost immediately.

Both Price, 19, and Underhill, 20, were airlifted to hospitals in Lubbock, Tex., about 180 kilometres away.

Possik said Darren Price called him at 6:30 a.m. and delivered the news. Possik said he immediately thought of the April 6, 2018 crash that killed 10 players on the Humboldt Broncos hockey team and six others travelling with them to a game in rural Saskatchewan.

“I was very shocked,” Possik said. “I asked myself how it could happen and, ‘Why God, why?’”

Dayton graduated from Silverthorn Collegiate Institute in Mississauga and is a freshman at the small private Christian school, studying sports management.

Also a freshman, Hayden attended the Ernestown Secondary School in Odessa, Ont., and was his high school’s most valuable player in golf three times. On a biography on the university’s website, he lists golfers Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods as his heroes.

The governor and lieutenant-governor of Texas, the New Mexico governor and hundreds of others have gone onto social media to pay tribute to the victims: golf coach Tyler James, 26; Jackson Zinn, 22; Karisa Raines, 21; Travis Garcia; 19; Laci Stone, 18, as well as Portuguese national Tiago Sousa, 18; and Mexican citizen Mauricio Sanchez, 19. So did the LPGA and other college golf programs.

Also killed was the passenger in the pickup, Henrich Siemans, 38, and the unidentified 13-year-old boy.

Dayton suffered multiple fractures and extensive third-degree burns and climbed out of the wreckage. Possik said he could be hospitalized as long as three months. Underhill also had burns as well as other injuries.

About a thousand people have donated more than $128,000 to Price’s GoFundMe account.

Possik said he set $200,000 as a goal but has no idea what costs the Price family will bear.

“We don’t know what the cost is going to be,” he said. Dayton will likely need surgeries, therapy and rehabilitation as part of his recovery. “We’re not sure what is going to come across their way.”

More than $75,000 had been raised for Underhill, who is progressing in his recovery enough to sit up in bed.

Possik said he met the Price family through hockey. His son attended a training program put on by Darren Price and they remain close friends.

“They are some of the nicest people you could ever meet,” he said.

He described Dayton as a polite and respectful young man.

“He is like the older brother my son never had,” Possik said. “I would trust him with my kids any time. He is a very mature, good-hearted kid who puts others ahead of himself.

“He is very caring.”

Adblock test (Why?)

More than $200000 raised on GoFundMe for Ontario students injured in Texas collision - The Globe and Mail
Read More