Tesla driver charged with manslaughter after crash into Texas home

A Texas man has been charged with manslaughter after his Tesla crashed into a home last month while allegedly in self-driving mode, killing a 76-year-old woman inside the residence, authorities said.

Michael Butler, 44, was arrested on July 1 and booked into the Harris County Jail in connection with the death of Martha Avila, according to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez. A magistrate set Butler's bond at $150,000, and he remained in custody on July 2, online jail records show.

Butler was driving a Tesla Model 3 at around 8 p.m. local time on June 19 when he failed to stay in a single lane, left the roadway, and crashed through the front of a two-story brick residence in Katy, Texas, a Houston suburb, the sheriff's office said in a news release. Butler told authorities the vehicle was operating with an automated driving assistance system engaged at the time of the crash, according to the sheriff's office.

The vehicle had entered the residence "at a high rate of speed" and struck Avila, the sheriff's office said. She was airlifted to a local hospital and later died from her injuries. The sheriff's office added that Butler showed no signs of intoxication during the incident and cooperated with authorities.

Surveillance footage captured by a camera on the home, shared by Avila's daughter Jennifer Barbour on Facebook, showed the vehicle flying off the road before striking the residence.

"She was the best grandma anyone could've asked for. A second mother for my kids and a blessing," Barbour previously told USA TODAY. "We are heartbroken."

The incident is under investigation by local authorities, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Family's lawsuit alleges negligence by driver, Tesla

The charge comes after Avila's family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Butler and Tesla, alleging the crash resulted from negligence and a "design defect" of the vehicle.

The lawsuit claims that the design defects in Butler's vehicle and in Tesla's Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems included the "failure to adequately monitor and determine driver engagement, the failure to adequately detect stationary objects and roadway terminations in the Vehicle's path, and Sudden Unintended Acceleration."

The suit cited a 2023 analysis of NHTSA data from The Washington Post that "identified at least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla's Autopilot." The analysis also "found that by mid-2023, Tesla's Autopilot system had been involved in at least 736 crashes since 2019."

The complaint, filed by Jennifer Barbour and her husband, Justin Barbour, in Harris County District Court on June 23, seeks more than $1 million in damages.

Tesla disputes account that self-driving system caused crash

Tesla has disputed claims that the vehicle's self-driving system was responsible for the collision. After the crash, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla, wrote on social media that Butler's description of events "makes no sense."

"FSD (full self-driving) drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high-speed crash!" Musk said in a post on X.

In a separate post on X, Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla's artificial intelligence software, alleged that the vehicle's self-driving feature was manually overridden.

"In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area," Elluswamy alleged. "They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash."

Tesla's driver-assistance systems have drawn scrutiny over the years following various incidents, multiple lawsuits, and federal safety investigations.

In 2023, the NHTSA announced a recall of more than 2 million Tesla vehicles over concerns with the Autopilot feature. The following year, federal investigators launched a probe into whether the recall had been adequate, citing 20 crashes involving Tesla vehicles with updated software.

Contributing: Greta Cross and Mike Snider, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tesla driver charged with manslaughter after crash into Texas home

Reporting by Thao Nguyen, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 9:17 PM.