Netflix’s The Crash has renewed attention on the case of Mackenzie Shirilla — and her parents are now facing online criticism after again insisting she is innocent.
Shirilla is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life after a crash in Strongsville, Ohio, where prosecutors said she drove a vehicle at roughly 100mph straight into a wall. Her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan, were killed.
The crash occurred in 2022. The following year, Shirilla was convicted on 12 felony counts, including murder, felonious assault and aggravated vehicular homicide.
The documentary has pushed the case back into the public eye, including Shirilla’s first on-camera comments about what happened. In the film, her parents, Steve and Natalie, maintain that she did not act intentionally and say they are continuing to challenge the conviction.
Steve Shirilla has since elaborated on his perspective in an interview with the True Crime This Week podcast, arguing that a car crash would be a strange method if his daughter had intended to kill Russo, given what he says was available at Russo’s home.
“If she was going to do that to Dom, there were guns all over that kid’s house,” he claimed. “If she was going to kill him, that would make more sense to me,”
Speaking to host James Renner, he also framed the incident as the result of immaturity rather than intent.
“She was 17. She’s a dumb kid. She didn’t do it on purpose,” he told host James Renner.
He added that, in his view, the presence of Davion Flanagan in the vehicle undermines the idea of a planned act directed at Russo.
“And I would think if my daughter was that mad, that mad at that boy to want to kill him that way, Davion would have never been in the car,” he added.
Those comments follow the release of additional Strongsville Police Department files, which included text messages between Steve and his daughter. The messages have circulated widely online after being shared on TikTok.
The texts shown online date back to 2020. In late March that year, Steve sent messages asking her to return home.
On April 2, she later asked him to make her warm milk.
And on May 3, she asked to stay at Russo’s home, to which he responded: “No. Sorry, don’t argue about it, it’s a no.”
Following the documentary’s release, it also emerged that Steve had been put on leave by the school where he worked as an art and digital media teacher.
“We are investigating allegations made on social media that one of our teachers has demonstrated poor judgement. Upon learning of the allegation the school acted immediately and placed the teacher on administrative leave,” the Mary Queen of Peace School wrote, adding that the investigation was ‘ongoing’.
Below is a timeline of key moments referenced in the case and in The Crash:
July 17 2022 – Mackenzie Shirilla and her boyfriend Dominic Russo get into an argument. A friend overhears Shirilla tell him: “I will crash this car right now.”
July 31 2022 – Shirilla is driving Russo, 20, and their friend Davion Flanagan, 19, from Russo’s home to a friend’s house. At around 5.30am, she crashes the car into a Plidco Building in Strongsville, Ohio, travelling at 100mph without braking. Police arrive on the scene 45 minutes later. Russo and Flanagan are pronounced dead and Shirilla is transported to MetroHealth Medical Center.
August 2022 – 200 people attend a vigil for Russo and Flanagan. Shirilla remains in critical condition. When a detective visits her in hospital, she is said to be speaking a ‘unique language’ similar to pig Latin.
October 2022 – Shirilla attends a Halloween party wearing fancy dress which resembles a corpse, which Davion’s father considers in very poor taste. He says in Netflix’s The Crash: “Dressing up as corpses three months after she killed two people, it just sickened us to the very core.”
November 4 2022 – Shirilla is arrested and faces 18 charges, including two counts of aggravated murder. She also faces charges for allegedly breaking into the Columbia Church of God in Columbia Station days before the crash, along with drug trafficking and possession charges.
August 7 2023 – Shirilla’s trial begins. Her defence team argue she may have passed out at the time of the crash due to postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), but no medical records or expert testimony confirms the diagnosis.
August 14 2023 – Shirilla is found guilty on all counts. Judge Nancy Margaret Russo calls her ‘hell on wheels’, and the court concludes she intetionally crashed the car in a premeditated act.
August 23 2023 – Shirilla is sentenced to two concurrent 15 years to life sentences. Her legal team later lose an appeal and relief petition. She remains incarcerated in Ohio Refamatory for Women.
May 22 2025 – Mackenzie’s parents insist that she’s innocent. Her father Steve tells WKYC: “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.” Her mother Natalie claims there are texts in which Shirilla says Russo was ‘trying to end her life’.
May 15 2026 – Netflix’s The Crash premieres. In it, Shirilla insists she is ‘not a murderer’ and has no memory of the crash, continuing to blame POTS.
May 18 2026 – Steve Shirilla is placed on administrative leave from his job as an art and digital media teacher at Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland following allegations he had ‘demonstrated poor judgement’. Viewers of Netflix’s documentary objected to his attitude towards Shirilla’s marijuana use and his dismissal of claims she told a classmate to end their life.
September 2037 – This is when Shirilla will be eligible for parole