An Ohio teenager faces life in prison after being convicted of murdering two young men in a car crash last summer when she allegedly intentionally drove a car 100 mph into a brick warehouse.
Mackenzie Shirilla, 19, was found guilty of four counts each of murder and felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, one count of drug possession and one count of possessing criminal tools. The charges stem from a crash in a Cleveland suburb last July that killed her boyfriend, 20-year-old Dominic Russo and passenger, 19-year-old Davion Flanagan.
Shirilla was 17 at the time of the crash.
Surveillance footage, which was a decisive element in the case, showed Shirilla turning slowly on one street before flooring her Toyota Camry down the street until it reached 100 mph, and crashing it. Data from the car’s computer revealed the car reached that speed before it crashed at around 5:30 a.m. on July 31, 2022.
Police said when first responders got to the scene, they had to extricate each of the occupants who were trapped and unconscious from Shirilla’s Toyota Camry. Authorities found Russo and Flanagan dead at the scene. Shirilla was airlifted to a hospital, where she recovered from her injuries.
The judge in Shirilla’s trial said that the final seconds in surveillance video that caught the crash were “key to her verdict,” making it an open-and-shut case.
“She morphs from responsible driver to literal hell on wheels. She had a mission, and she executed it with precision,” Common Pleas Court judge Nancy Margaret Russo said. “Her actions were controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional and purposeful. This was not reckless driving. This was murder.”
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