A 24-year-old Austin man who had cocaine in his system when he crashed into another vehicle on Bee Caves Road in 2023, killing two people, pleaded guilty this month to a lesser charge and was sentenced to five years of community supervision rather than prison time. Noah Monks will also serve 150 days in the Travis County jail as a condition of that probation, along with a lengthy list of fines, treatment requirements, and an ignition interlock device on his personal vehicle.
The crash happened around 9:23 p.m. on August 18, 2023, when two vehicles collided in the 7000 block of Bee Caves Road, according to Vision Zero ATX. Emergency responders received a vehicle rescue call at the scene, and medics pronounced two victims, 55-year-old Kitta Kaori and 55-year-old Segraves Sherrod St. John Cromwell, dead at the scene. A third adult was hospitalized with critical, life-threatening injuries.
Court documents and a toxicology report showed Monks had cocaine in his system at the time of the crash, a finding detailed in Travis County records filed roughly a year after the collision, as reported by KXAN and recorded by Vision Zero ATX. An arrest warrant issued on August 19, 2024, when Monks was 22 years old, initially charged him with two counts of criminally negligent homicide connected to the deaths of Kaori and Cromwell.
From Two Felony Counts to a Single Guilty Plea
According to KXAN Austin, Monks pleaded guilty on August 3 to charges connected to the 2023 crash, resolving the case through a negotiated plea rather than trial. The station, which first reported the sentencing outcome, reported that Travis County court documents show he was charged with criminal negligent homicide, a state jail felony. It remains unclear from available records why prosecutors resolved the two fatal-victim counts into the negotiated plea, and whether family members of Kaori or Cromwell submitted victim impact statements during sentencing.
Under Texas Penal Code § 19.05, criminally negligent homicide is a state jail felony, defined as causing a death through criminal negligence that represents a gross deviation from the standard of care a reasonable person would observe, according to Saputo Toufexis. The statute requires proving that gross deviation rather than simple civil negligence. Standard punishment for a state jail felony under Texas Penal Code § 12.35 ranges from 180 days to two years in a state jail facility plus a fine of up to $10,000, per FindLaw, and such sentences are typically served day-for-day without standard parole eligibility.
What the Sentence Actually Requires
Instead of state jail time, Monks received five years of community supervision, per the KXAN report. As a condition of that probation, he must serve 150 days in the Travis County jail. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure Chapter 42A allows judges to place state jail felony defendants on community supervision for up to five years and to order as much as 180 days of county jail confinement as a probation condition, according to FindLaw, giving courts discretion to combine upfront local jail time with extended supervision.
The station's report lays out a lengthy set of additional conditions tied to Monks' probation. He must install an ignition interlock system on his personal vehicle within 30 days of sentencing and participate in an ignition interlock program for 60 months. He is also required to complete counseling and treatment set by his supervision officer, submit to random urinalysis, and take a driver's safety class.
Fines and Restitution Add Up
Per the same account, Monks must pay $13,786.50 in restitution to a contact for one of the deceased victims. He also owes $460 in court fees, a $100 drug or controlled-substance fine, a $100 family violence center fine, a $30 Crime Stoppers fee, and $60 per month in supervision reimbursement fees for the length of his probation.
Monks had a prior brush with law enforcement before the fatal crash. He was arrested on January 20, 2023, in Williamson County on a Class C misdemeanor charge of assault family violence, seven months before the Bee Caves Road collision, according to Williamson County arrest records. How the court weighed that earlier misdemeanor arrest in reaching the plea agreement is not addressed in available records.
A Broader Pattern in Travis County Crash Data
The case surfaces amid wider concerns about impaired driving on Travis County roads. The Travis County Medical Examiner's Office recorded 198 motor vehicle-related deaths countywide in 2023, including 97 automobile occupant fatalities, with vehicular crashes representing the primary category of traffic deaths that year, according to Vision Zero ATX.
An October 2023 study by Austin's Vision Zero initiative, comparing Medical Examiner toxicology reports to state crash records from 2018 through 2022, found that official state crash reports significantly undercount drug and alcohol involvement among local fatal traffic victims, as reported by the Austin Monitor. That gap underscores how cases like Monks', where impairment surfaced only in court documents a year after the crash, may not be fully captured in the state's official crash statistics.
