MCT8329A: Reliability

i am trying to evaluate the mct8329a for an application

i found this on the docs.

"There are a large number of protection features integrated into the MCT8329A, intended to protect the device, motor, and system against fault events. documentation"

I got an the MCT8329EVM dev kit, which seems to isolate the MCT8329 chip's input and output further from direct access by the user during testing.

I connected the EVM as per docs as shown below, but when i tried using the variable resistor to run the motor, the actual MCT8329 on the EVM kit went up in smoke.

is this likely a normal early failure rate issue, a reliability issue or a user operational issue