"Tesla received a message from the car on July 1st indicating a crash event, but logs were never transmitted. We have no data at this point to indicate that Autopilot was engaged or not engaged. This is consistent with the nature of the damage reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail."[1]

When that gets trimmed down to a sound bite, it can give the impression the vehicle was not on autopilot.

The driver told the state trooper he was on autopilot.[2] He was on a long, boring section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike; that's the most likely situation to be on autopilot.

The NTSB will sort this out.

[1] http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Was-Tesla-invol... [2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/pennsylvan...