A single, chilling decision would alter Mackenzie Shirilla’s life permanently and take the lives of her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan, after she chose to drive into a wall at extreme speed.
The deadly moment, which unfolded in July 2022 when Shirilla hit the accelerator, ultimately led to a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. It is also the focus of the Netflix true crime documentary The Crash.
While the 17-year-old initially told police she had blacked out while driving, later evidence contradicted that account. Footage from the scene and data from the car’s black box indicated that she kept pressing the accelerator as the vehicle hurtled into a wall at around 100mph.
Police bodycam video from responders in Strongsville, Ohio, shows just how far the aftermath deviated from what officers would normally expect from a traffic collision, with the damage leaving them stunned.
“Radio, this car’s split in two,” one officer says, audibly shocked, after reaching the scene about 45 minutes after Shirilla’s Toyota Camry struck the corner of the Plidco building at roughly 5.25am.
As the officer moves closer to the mangled vehicle to assess the situation, he tries to see inside to determine how many people were involved. He then calls for additional support while efforts begin to break the windows to reach those trapped.
Updating dispatch, the officer adds: “We’ve got at least two occupants in here, no one’s moving… oh my God, times three guys, radio three occupants. No one’s conscious, no one’s breathing.”
Russo, 20, and Flanagan, 19, were both pronounced dead at the scene. However, the bodycam footage obtained by TMZ captures the moment responders discover that Shirilla has survived the horrific impact.
She was located wedged between the driver’s seat and the door, unconscious but still breathing. Court testimony analyzing the collision later indicated that the passenger side was the area that struck the building’s corner.
“This is the worst car crash I’ve ever seen,” the officer says while scanning the devastation and the shredded remains of the car, as more emergency crews begin arriving.
Firefighters then start the painstaking process of freeing the occupants, beginning with the only survivor. When the door is forced open and Shirilla is pulled out, she can be heard screaming in pain.
As she regains awareness and is placed on a stretcher to be transported by helicopter to a nearby hospital, Shirilla tells EMTs that her leg hurts. In the background, an officer can be heard advising that she should not yet be informed that her friends have died.
At one point, an officer comments that it is a ‘bad place to put a building’, suggesting it was not an area where a vehicle would typically end up if it simply ran off the road. Responders also note that the scene lacked the usual skid marks associated with heavy braking before impact.
Shirilla was not arrested for the alleged intentional crash until three months later. Investigators later received information from peers about her prior behavior, along with data and recordings from the Life360 tracking app that investigators said showed the car accelerating into the wall.
She was ultimately convicted on four counts of murder and felony assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, and additional lesser drug-related charges.