Tesla driver charged with manslaughter after crash into Texas home
A Texas man has been charged with manslaughter last month after his Tesla, allegedly in self-driving mode, crashed into a home, killing a 76-year-old woman inside the residence, authorities said.
Michael Butler, 44, was arrested July 1 and booked into the Harris County Jail in connection with the death of Martha Avila. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. Online jail records show a judge set Butler’s bond at $150,000, and Butler remained in custody July 2.
The sheriff’s office said Butler was driving a Tesla Model 3 around 8 p.m. local time on June 19 when he failed to stay in one lane, went off the road, and crashed into the front of a two-story brick house in Katy, a Texas suburb of Houston. newsletter. According to the sheriff’s office, Butler told authorities that the vehicle was operating with an automatic driver assistance system that was active at the time of the crash.
The sheriff’s office said the vehicle entered the residence “at a high rate of speed” and struck Avila. He was airlifted to a local hospital and later died from his injuries. The sheriff’s office added that Butler showed no signs of intoxication at the time of the incident and was cooperating with authorities.
surveillance images Footage recorded by a camera in the home, shared on Facebook by Avila’s daughter, Jennifer Barbour, shows the vehicle flying off the road before crashing into the residence.
“She was the best grandmother anyone could ask for. A second mother and a blessing to my children,” Barbour previously told USA TODAY. “We are heartbroken.”
The incident is being investigated by local authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
From left to right, Jennifer Barbour and her mother, Martha Avila. Avila, 76, died on Friday, June 19, 2026, when a Tesla vehicle entered his home in Kathy, Texas.
Family’s lawsuit alleges driver Tesla’s negligence
The accusation comes after Avila’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Butler and Tesla, claiming the crash was caused by negligence and a “design flaw” in the vehicle.
The lawsuit alleges that design flaws in Butler’s vehicle and Tesla’s Autopilot and Fully Self-Driving systems include “failure to adequately monitor and determine driver involvement, failure to adequately detect stationary objects and road ends in the Vehicle’s path, and Sudden Unintended Acceleration.”
The lawsuit cited a 2023 analysis of NHTSA data. Washington Post “At least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla’s Autopilot have been identified.” The analysis also “found that as of mid-2023, Tesla’s Autopilot system has been involved in at least 736 crashes since 2019.”
The complaint, filed June 23 in Harris County District Court by Jennifer Barbour and her husband, Justin Barbour, seeks more than $1 million in damages.
Tesla Autopilot status: 87-year-old driver died when Tesla in autopilot mode crashed into a pond
Tesla disputes claim that autonomous driving system caused accident
Tesla disputed claims that the vehicle’s autonomous system was responsible for the collision. After the accident, Elon MuskTesla’s founder and CEO wrote on social media that Butler’s explanation of events “doesn’t make any sense.”
“FSD (full self-driving) was slowly making its way through neighborhood streets and this was a high-speed crash!” Musk said a post on x.
One Separate post on XAshok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla’s AI software, claimed that the vehicle’s self-driving feature was manually overridden.
“In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by depressing the accelerator pedal to 100% of the throttle in this residential area,” Elluswamy said. “They were traveling at speeds of 73 mph at the time of the crash and kept pressing the accelerator even after the crash.”
Tesla’s driver assistance systems have been the subject of scrutiny in the years following various incidents. multiple lawsuitsAnd federal security investigations.
In 2023, NHTSA announces recall More than 2 million Tesla vehicles Due to concerns about the autopilot feature. The following year, federal investigators launched an investigation It investigated whether the recall was sufficient, citing 20 accidents involving Tesla vehicles with updated software.
Credit: Greta Cross and Mike Snider, USA TODAY
This article first appeared on USA TODAY: Tesla driver charged with manslaughter after crashing into Texas home
