On July 31, 2022, 17-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla crashed a car carrying her boyfriend, Dom, and his friend, Davion, killing both men while leaving Shirilla injured, but alive.
Authorities later concluded the collision was intentional, and Netflix revisits the case in a new documentary that also shares the final message Dom sent to his father shortly before the crash.
Dom’s father, Frank Russo, appears among those interviewed in The Crash, which lands on Netflix on May 15. The film examines the moments leading up to the incident, when Shirilla was driving Dom and Davion home from a party and hit a brick building at speeds reported to be over 100 mph while behind the wheel of a 2018 Toyota Camry.
Shirilla survived but suffered extensive injuries, including multiple broken bones and damage to internal organs. The documentary says she had ‘looked like she had lost a fight’.
Investigators pointed to vehicle data as a key part of their findings. Information pulled from the car’s black box indicated the accelerator was fully depressed in the seconds before impact and that the brakes were not applied.
After Dom died, Russo spoke with officers the next morning as police worked to establish a timeline and understand what had happened.
Bodycam footage shows Russo asking officers what time the crash occurred, though they didn’t yet have a confirmed time at that stage of the investigation.
He then checked his phone and looked at the timestamp of his son’s final text, which had come through at 2:53am.
The message read: “Love you dad.”
Shirilla has continued to deny that she deliberately caused the crash, but she was convicted in 2023 on 12 charges, including murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, felonious assault and drug possession.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo – no relation to Dom – said: “She had a mission and she executed it with precision. The decision was death.”
She was given two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life and remains incarcerated. Shirilla attempted to appeal, but Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals left the conviction in place after the filing was submitted one day past the 365-day jurisdictional deadline.
Her parents have continued to defend her since the crash, telling 3News: “Show me one piece of evidence — one — that says she did this on purpose. Show it to me. Then she’s right where she belongs and she’s guilty of it. But there isn’t any. There’s no evidence (of) what was going on in that car other than information they gleaned from the black box.”
The Crash is available to stream on Netflix from May 15.