Mackenzie Shirilla, the Ohio teenager convicted of deliberately crashing her car at 100km/h and killing her boyfriend and his friend, has spoken out for the first time.
In the Netflix documentary “The Crash,” she maintained her innocence, stating that she is “not a monster.”
The documentary, released May 15, recreates the July 31, 2022, tragedy in Strongsville, Ohio. When Shirilla, 17, crashed her Toyota Camry into a wall while driving at high speed, Dominic Russo, 20, who was her boyfriend, and Davion Flanagan, 19, died instantly. The accident left Shirilla with serious injuries.
In a 2023 trial, Judge Nancy Margaret Russo also found Shirilla guilty of murder, calling her “literal hell on wheels.”
The court stated that she “had a mission and she carried it out with precision. The mission was death.”
Following the court order, she was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
The teenager is now 21 years old and is incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. Shirilla tells Netflix that she has no recollection of the crash. According to prosecutors, the evidence confirmed that the car data revealed that her foot was fully on the accelerator without braking.
In the documentary, she stated, “I’m not a monster. I’m not saying I’m innocent. I was the leader of a tragedy. But I’m not a murderer.”
Prosecutors claimed the pair had a toxic relationship using text messages in which Shirilla threatened to crash the car a few weeks before the incident. Shirilla’s parents disagree with this statement and say that she may have had an illness caused by POTS syndrome.
