Ndiaga Diagne, accused of killing three people and injuring 15 others in a downtown Austin shooting spree on Sunday, was a former Tesla employee at the company’s Gigafactory Texas.
A lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the automaker of failing to ensure a safe environment after Diagne allegedly assaulted a 65-year-old colleague there in December.
Lillian Mendoza Brady, a Buda resident, filed the suit in Travis County state district court. She claims the unprovoked attack occurred while Diagne was on a company-allowed prayer break.
The suit says Tesla did not monitor common areas or supervise approved activities at the factory, “creating an unreasonably dangerous condition,” the Austin American-Statesman reported. It also alleges that the company failed to know its employees’ backgrounds.
Brady, one of the approximately 22,000 people who worked at the Gigafactory Texas last year, said she had never seen Diagne before the December 4 incident. Afterward, she repeatedly asked the company for his name so that she could press charges, but Tesla withheld the information, according to her attorneys.
She only identified him after media images circulated following the early Sunday mass shooting. Information suggesting Diagne possessed a violent temperament has also surfaced since then.
Her attorney Bob Hilliard said the case will explore whether earlier action could have made a difference.
“If Tesla had information about Diagne’s violent behavior before he attacked Lillian Brady and failed to act, then not only might her assault have been prevented, it may have been an early warning sign of a far greater danger,” Hilliard said, per the Statesman. “This lawsuit seeks to determine what Tesla knew and why this early incident wasn’t taken seriously.”
“Violence rarely appears out of nowhere,” Hilliard said. “Our lawsuit will examine what warning signs were present, why they were ignored, and why Tesla failed to protect its 65-year-old employee.”