Lifestyle
Tesla owner relates dramatic tale of road rage, a gunshot, and a mad dash to save a boy’s life
People tend to do ridiculously foolish things when consumed by road rage. US statistics indicate that one in three collisions involves road rage, and eight out of ten Americans are involved in road rage behavior at least once a year. With such numbers, it is no surprise that road rage is the cause of approximately 30 murders annually in the United States. One such incident almost happened recently, if it wasn’t for a Good Samaritan driving an electric car.
A Tesla Model S owner (who declined to have his name published) was driving on Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, after getting his COVID-19 vaccine when he caught sight of a crash near Monroe Drive. As the EV driver got closer, he saw a woman crawling out of her vehicle while holding a small child. The woman was screaming for help, stating that her baby’s been shot. She was desperately trying to flag down passing vehicles, but some drivers, despite gawking at the crash, were simply driving away. The Tesla owner, who had his window down already, sprung into action.
Breaking the Bystander Effect
In a statement to the Chicago Tribune, the Tesla owner stated that he didn’t even get out of the car. “It wasn’t much of a conversation. I remember her pleading: ‘Help me!’” the EV driver said. Sharing his experience further, the Tesla owner noted that he told the woman, who was later identified as the boy’s grandmother, to just jump in, and that he would drive them to a hospital. A man that was with the woman and injured child also rode with the pair.
The Model S owner noted that his adrenaline was pumping then, and all he could focus on was to get his three passengers to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, which was several blocks away. As soon as the group arrived at Northwestern’s emergency room, hospital staff rushed the woman, the boy, and the man into the medical facility. That was the last time that the EV driver saw them together, though the man later expressed his thanks.
The boy, who was identified as 21-month-old Kayden Swann, had been shot in the head during a road rage incident that started on Lake Shore Drive. According to police, the shooter and the victims did not appear to know each other, though the incident seemed to have been caused by one of the drivers not letting the other into their lane. Kayden was in a child safety seat in a white Lincoln, while his grandmother was in the passenger seat. The grandmother’s boyfriend was driving.
As per a witness, the Lincoln and an SUV started driving erratically in what appeared to be an altercation. Eventually, someone from the SUV fired several shots at the Lincoln, one of which hit Kayden in the head. Another witness noted that the man driving the Lincoln also returned fire. The crash happened not long after.
The Aftermath
The Tesla owner told the Tribune that he did not want to leave the hospital after transporting the injured boy, partly because his adrenaline was still running. After about two minutes, two Chicago police officers arrived at the hospital. The authorities spoke with the Tesla owner and gathered evidence and blood samples from the Model S’ back seats. The Tesla driver also shared videos from his vehicle’s built-in dashcam. Explaining his actions, the Tesla owner noted that he could not have lived with himself if he did not help.
“I’m glad we could get there in time. I didn’t know the baby had been shot in the head. The truth is, as fast as this happened, I have no idea what they even looked like. I mean, they needed help. Ultimately, I could not have that on my conscience. I could be inconvenienced, and that was the cause of someone’s death?” the man said.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Dr. Marcelo Malakooti of Lurie Children’s Hospital, where Kayden Swann was transferred to, noted that the 21-month old boy was in a medical coma to protect his brain. He was also hooked up to a ventilator. This weekend, a local ABC report noted that Kayden had been removed from a medically induced coma, but he was still looked up to a ventilator.
Jushawn Brown, the 43-year-old man with Kayden and his grandmother, had been slapped with felony gun charges and released on a $5,000 bail. The SUV driver had not been apprehended as of date.
Don’t hesitate to contact us for news tips. Just send a message to tips@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. 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. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Tesla expands ridesharing service in California to new hotspot
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
