>There's a case to be made against the driver, but sounds like an accident.

I'd take a hard look at what the case the prosecution will bring at the December 22nd court date.

The only thing released so far is an official reiterating the defendant's statement.

The police so far have said nothing, and that's telling. They are bringing in investigators. They could very well feel this was a "crash" (which regardless, it is) and not an "accident". Talk to folks in industry, and they'll strongly argue that most "accidents" weren't. The $100,000 bail was telling of what police and prosecution thought.

"Accidental acceleration" is a lot easier to disprove with airbag event data recorders (which record all manner of telemetry 5 seconds prior to a deployment, and possibly a wee bit past it), modern infotainment systems which record far more outside of the regulatory requirement for airbag data recorders, and so forth. There's also going to be cameras from inside the Apple store, presumably time lapse cameras from all around the mall property, etc.

This wasn't some beat up old truck. This was a 2019 4Runner which is pretty damn modern.

Last, Toyota has paid out $1.2B in a previous settlement a long time ago to make accidental acceleration claims go away, even if claimants couldn't conclusively prove it was Toyota's fault (though the programming wasn't exactly best practices, IIRC) -- they just paid out to make it all stop. They don't want to get dragged into another potential $1B+ settlement that starts with this event spawning who knows how many more lawsuits. So if this goes into a "This was a problem with my Toyota" argument by the defendant, I'd expect Toyota to be MORE THAN WILLING to supply expert witnesses to the prosecution if requested, if Toyota feels it keeps them free and clear.

The prosecution, investigators, Apple, the mall, Toyota, and the victims ALL want this to be a thorough investigation and not just take people at their word. This has the potential to be a very interesting case to follow.