Harris County prosecutors have charged the Tesla driver who crashed into a Katy, Texas, home and killed a 76-year-old woman with manslaughter, alleging he overrode Full Self-Driving to floor the car to 73 mph in a residential cul-de-sac.
The charging document also reveals something new: in the weeks before the crash, the driver had been Googling that FSD wasn’t aggressive enough.
Michael David Butler, 44, of Richmond, was charged July 1 in Harris County’s 208th District Court with one count of manslaughter in the June 19 death of Martha Avila. He remains in jail on a $150,000 bond and is due in court Monday. Manslaughter is a second-degree felony in Texas, carrying two to 20 years.
We laid out the most likely scenario when first reporting on this accident earlier this week and again when Tesla admitted FSD was engaged but blamed the driver for “overriding” it. The criminal complaint is the fullest account yet, reportedly built from the car’s telemetry, dashcam footage, cellphone records, and medical evidence. It fills in a lot.
What the black box shows
