Man who was driving Tesla when it crashed into Katy home charged with manslaughter, sheriff says
HOUSTON (CW39) — The man who was at the wheel of a Tesla that crashed into a home in Katy and killed a woman was charged with manslaughter, the Harris County sheriff said. Michael Butler, 44, was arrested and booked into the Harris County Jail on Wednesday, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. The crash happened on Friday night, June 19 on Booming Park Lane in the Memorial Parkway area of Katy, when Butler’s Tesla Model 3 crashed into the home. Investigators believe the car was going at a fast rate of speed. Butler said that he had turned on the car’s autopilot program, which led to the crash, which killed 76-year-old Martha Avila. Her daughter, Jennifer Barbour, and her husband, Justin Barbour, have filed a lawsuit against Butler and Tesla due to the crash. The lawsuit alleges the accident was “caused by the concurrent negligence of Defendant Butler and the defective condition of the Vehicle and its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems as designed, manufactured, and marketed by Defendant Tesla.” Tesla has not officially responded to the crash, but its CEO, Elon Musk, said the crash “makes no sense.” “FSD [full self-driving] drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” Musk said on X. Tesla’s vice president of AI software, Ashok Elluswamy, similarly argued that the driver “manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it has launched a special crash investigation into the incident. The Hill contributed to this report.
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