Mackenzie Shirilla, the Ohio teen who was convicted of deliberately crashing her car at 100 mph and killing her boyfriend and his friend, spoke out for the first time.
In Netflix’s documentary “The Crash”, she maintained her innocence, stating she is “not a monster.”
The documentary, released on May 15, revisits the July 31, 2022, tragedy in Strongsville, Ohio. When Shirilla, aged 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 crash left Shirilla with severe injuries.
In a bench 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.”
After 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 that she has no memory of the crash. As per prosecutors, the evidence confirmed that the car data revealed that her foot was fully on the accelerator with no braking attempt.
In the documentary, she stated, “I’m not a monster. I am 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, using text messages where Shirilla threatened to crash the car a few weeks before the incident. Shirilla’s parents disagree with this statement, stating that she might have had an illness caused by POTS syndrome.
