Mackenzie Shirilla, the Ohio teenager who was convicted of deliberately crashing her car at 100 mph and killing her boyfriend and his friend, has spoken out for the first time.
In the Netflix documentary “The Crash,” he maintained his innocence and stated that “he is not a monster.”
The documentary, released on May 15, revisits the tragedy of July 31, 2022 in Strongsville, Ohio. When Shirilla, 17, crashed her Toyota Camry into a brick 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.
At a trial in 2023, 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 executed it with precision. The mission was death.”
Following the court’s ruling, 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 she doesn’t remember the accident. According to prosecutors, evidence confirmed that the car’s data revealed that his foot was fully on the accelerator without any attempt to brake.
In the documentary, she stated: “I’m not a monster. I’m not saying I’m innocent. I was the driver of a tragedy. But I’m not a murderer.”
Prosecutors claimed the couple had a toxic relationship and used text messages in which Shirilla threatened to crash the car a few weeks before the incident. Shirilla’s parents disagree with this claim and claim that she could have had an illness caused by POTS syndrome.
