MOORHEAD - Ray Kvalvog suggested his 18-year-old son drive the family's 2010 Dodge Ram pickup to basketball camp. He thought the truck would be the right size for Zach and Connor Kvalvog and their two friends, all students at Park Christian School in Moorhead. He thought it would protect them.
But on their way to Wisconsin, his only sons were killed in a fatal rollover , and this week he learned the truck might have had a steering defect that the truck's manufacturer never told him about.
"When I read it now, I feel even more horrible," Kvalvog said Tuesday. "I'm sick about it. It's another slap in the face, another punch in the gut. I should have been driving that truck, I usually do drive it."
After 23 safety recalls, failures to notify car owners of those recalls and some unsuccessful repairs, Fiat Chrysler is buying back thousands of Dodge Rams as part of a legal settlement announced Monday.
See also: Moorhead parents speak out about death of their sons
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The Minnesota State Patrol's lead investigator on the Kvalvog case, Sgt. Rod Eischens, said Tuesday he is looking into whether the Kvalvogs' vehicle was one of the eligible models, some of which have a steering defect that can cause the driver to lose control.
Kvalvog, who had already called his Chrysler dealer, was certain.
"Unequivocally yes. If that truck was not wrecked, as it is now, it would be part of the recall," he said. "Thirty-some days too late for my boys."
Zach Kvalvog, 18, was driving east on Interstate 94 near Fergus Falls when he hit the shoulder, overcorrected to the right and rolled into the median, according to the State Patrol. The June 23 crash killed Zach and his brother, Connor, 14, and injured the two other students in the pickup.
In October, after receiving a card in the mail, Ray Kvalvog brought the truck in for a recall related to the front axle. But he said he was never notified about a possible problem with the steering.
"My son has a brand new Chevrolet that he could have driven," Kvalvog said. "But I had a big truck I thought was safe. I thought I had had it fixed."
Kvalvog said he found a black box that revealed his son was driving 77 mph at the time of the crash, when a semi was "extremely close" to the pickup, according to the State Patrol, which has not found the semi driver.
In the time since the crash, Kvalvog has driven that stretch 50 times, trying to figure out what happened. He said it's an easy drive. But he can imagine what happened.
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"My son's coming up around that curve, and there's a semi that's encroaching on him, and he has to make a quick maneuver," Kvalvog said. "Pretty hard to go around a curve if you lose your steering."
The totaled truck is in Avon, Minn., Kvalvog said, and will be inspected for insurance and investigative purposes.
"This is new to us, too," said Capt. Brian Cheney, head of the patrol's Detroit Lakes district. "If there was a failure of some sort mechanically on the vehicle and (the vehicle) fell within that (model), it obviously could be a factor in the crash."
Even if there are no defects, Kvalvog still wishes he had known about the possibility earlier.
"The fact is, if Chrysler would have come out with this info in June instead of July 27, nobody would be driving that truck," he said. "I think this is a bad one on Chrysler. I don't know how long they've sat on the news, but it's too late for my boys."
