Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
In 2022, Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan were in the car with Russo’s 17-year-old girlfriend, Mackenzie Shrilla, when she was on a secret mission to kill her boyfriend. Shrilla drove her car into a brick building at 100 mph, killing the two boys while she survived
it was a peaceful summer’s evening in 20022, three teenagers were spending the night at a friend’s house,celebrating their recent graduation from high school.
mc kenzie shirilla was the designated driver for the end of the night.
her boyfriend of 3 years….
and his friend trusted her to get them home safely….
but what if this was the last thing she wanted.in this CCT footage mckenzy can be seen driving at 100 mph down a quiet street
before smashing into a building.
the collision killed both her boyfriend and his friend
mckenzy claimed that this was a tragic accident
but ironically merely 3 months after the crash she was seen dressed up as a corpse.
is this a the behavior of an innocent victim or a coldblooded killer.
this is the case of mc kenzie shirilla
it was the end of july 2022 in the peaceful town of strongville, Ohio.
the seniors of that year’s graduating class looked forward to brgiht futures. their parents were proud of them.
that was the case for dominic russo and davion flanigan both 19 .
dominic was one of eight children a go – getter who loved playing baseket ball and was driven to succeed. he was starting his own clothing line .
davion too had ambitions
he and his two biological sisters spent som of their early years in foster care.both of their parents were addicts and the children wre removed from their parents home as result of neglect.life in the foster system was no easier.
when the siblings were adopted by husband and wife scott and jaime flanagan, jaime recalls they were very underweight rescued from a difficult life .
davion recognized that he had been given a 2nd chance .
he was determined to grasp this chance with both hands. he could pick up any sport and be good at it from the start, he was mainly focused on football, that was his passion . when leg injurie spoiled his dreams of football ,he developed he developed another dream.
that of going to barber college and open his own barber shop. Davion was a resourceful teen hwo taught himself the basic skills from YouTube and TikTok and he had only recently submitted his application to the All State barber college.
life beyond july was full of hope for both young men , yet an unforeseeable tragic ending lay in store for both of them.
to all appearances mckenzie was a typical, if riskt-taking teenage girl.
she had her own Tik Tok account where she posted careless videos of her self joking about her use of illicit substances.
she frequently posed with with paraphenalia in photos taken in her car,this was irresponsible criminal behavior, but no one could have predicted where it would lead.
what started as a whirlwind team romance had continued for over 3 years. mckenzy was now living with dominic and his family and apparently the cramped quarters had taken their toll on the young lover’s relationship .
at school she had been considered something of a bully .
according to davion’s mother mckenzy would make it her buisness to humiliate people and took delight in it.
in the past she had told people who were depressed to kill themselves this was the first sign that something would go terribly wrong.
mckenzy and dominic frequently fought and broke up before making up again as if nothing had happened. she treated him in the same way she had treated everyone else at school.displaying narcissism and an impulse to inflict hurt.
her own personality combined with a pressurized environment that was constant cohabitation with dominic gave rise to one incident in particular that gave a disturbing taste of what was yet to come.
on july 17th 2022,mckenzy was driving her toyota camry on interstate 71, dominic was her passenger, they were in the middle of an argument and as was so often the case their conflict was taking place inside a shared confined space,
dominic wanted out ,he phoned his mother asking to be picked up .when she was not available
he then asked a friend, this friend was on the other end of the line when he he heard mckenzy say ” i’ll crash this car right now”
dominic’s friend sped to the scene and when he pulled up behind mckenzy’s car stopped on the side of the road, dominic’ss door was open.
as dominic sat there mckenzy was hitting him with both hands.
in another incident that same month, dominic recorded a another argument. in the videos mckenzy could be heard repeatedly degrading him. things had clearly degenerated between the couple. from living together he was no longer comfortable with her presence in his house.
she threatened to keep his car if he wouldn’t let her in or else break off the door handle.she counted down enforcing a time limit forhim to come and let her into the house.
when dominic still didn’t open the door mckenzy said” you’re going to come open this door right now or there’s going to be a serious problem.
once again . dominic called his mom for help . the involvement of his mother in both situation reminds us as to just how young both dominic and mckenzy were.
the conflict in their relationship continued to escalate.
but no one could have predicted where the relationship would end
at approximately 5:30 in the morning of july 31 st 2022 a car crashed into a strongsville building at speeds of 100 mph ,this car was a toyota camry its passengers were dominic russo and his friend davion flanigan.its driver was its owner mc kenzie shirilla.
dominic and davion died at the scene.
but mckenzie was unconscious and not breathing she was flown to the hospital in critical condition .
to all appearances this was a tragic accident that cut short the lives of two promising young high school graduates and seriously endangered the life of a third.
this was what the community believed.
GoFundMe pages were set up for each person involved in the crash family and friends were donating to memorial funds for dominic and davion and to support mckenzie’s family in covering her medical expenses.
as kenzy recovered she took to posting on dominic’s obituary page, she wrote seemingly heartfelt messages saying like;
her grief was public and apparently sincere no one could help but sympathize with mckenzie
this teenage girl who’d been the victim of a such an awful accident ,but that was before they knew the truth.
shortly after the crash strongsville police were notified that they had received concerning emails from the community that mckenzie and her mother were seeking employment with the los angeles modeling agency.
there’s no date on this , based on the investigation it was delivered to the police while mckenzie was still in the metro health hospital it was during that time period she was in the hospital for several weeks.
shortly after she was released from the hospital , the police provided additional videos of mckenzie from her wheelchair as she attended a concert down in the flats .
the prosecutors introduced these to the court to show the shocking lack of remorse. this was something that was being exhibited while the investigation was still going on before she was charged and arrested in november of last year.
and these were the sort of things that were coming to the police and the schocking lack of remorse coupled with the fact that mckenzie was reporting driving an automobile, shortly after this event that she was seen in strongsville again driving a car in spite of the fact that as her mother testified she got dizzy sometimes from a condition that she had to take salt pills for .
the fact that it was in fact her mother who provided her with the car she used to take dominic and davion’s life.
12 weeks later on on october 31 st 2022 , mckenzie had recovered enough to celebrate halloween she and her friends went out on the town trick -or -treating dressed as corpses, in a corset and heavy makeup, mckenzie was almost ubrecognizable,she certainly looked nothing like the grieving victim of a horrific auto accident who’d lost her boyfriend only 3 months before.
and another aoutfit for the same celebration , she dressed as drank – the toxic combination of cough syrup, alcohol and a soft drink that has become popular among youngsters. her friend was dressed as a joint together they celebrated substance abuse and death.
the terrible hallmarks of her recent trauma indeed the police found evidence of illicit substances inside the crashed car.
and mckenzie’s blood had been tested the morning of the crash and the level of THC inhe bloodstream had been found to be over the legal limit.
this on its own would be enough to charge her with driving under the influence changing the consequence of reckless teenage behavior.
but a mere 5 days after mckenzie’s decadent hallowing outing the police charge her with double homicide.
the tragedy that torn apart three families and had and rocked a tight-knit
community was now undered doubt. had it been a reckless addcident or deliberate act of murder
mckenzies lawyers contended that she lost control of the car.
as a teenager they suggested she might have been easily overwhelmed by a chaotic situation and unablr to stop the car and save its passengers lives.
the attorneys pointed to how common reckless driving is among young people .they describe mcKenzie as inexperienced and irresponsible but not a murderer.
they cited her use of illicit substances as another factor in the crash at this point no one was denying that mckenzie was in some way to blame for the tragedy.
during her recovery in the hospital,doctors noted that she expressed feelings of grief ,guilt, and shame about the crash.
“patient stated she open quote wanted to die close,quote and that it was her fault for killing her boyfriend”
whether she’d lost control of the car or been in charge of it the entire time ,she had killed her boyfriend and his friend and she was going to be held legally responsible.
mckenzie claimed she did not remember the crash.
she sent a text to dominic’s mothe saying : “i remember turning onto the street and then my vision fades to black, it really kills me not be able to remember anything, I’ve bee askking my therapist why i don’t remember and she said i’ts because of trauma but i’m going to try get hypnotized and make myself remember”
if she didn’t remember it , she could deflect the moral weight of what she had done.it would remain an accident and she would not be a murderer.
however the police and prosecution took a different view in their eyes this was a cold callously planned double homicide.
mckenzie,dominic and davion had spent the night before the crash at a riend’s house.they had smoked a substances but this was not what lay at the heart of the horriffic events to follow .
mckenzie had a plan and she followed it.pivotal to the case was the CCTV footage from a business neighboring the side of the crash.
this foootage supported what the car’s recorded showed about her behavior as a driver.both technical analysis demonstrate that far from being high and out of control mckenzie’s actions were entirely deliberate.
the first footage show mckenzie turning thhe car slowly and carefully , she diligently signaled her right turn hardly the act of a substance crazed reckless teenager, but in the next footage something changed.
the early morning was dark and quite until the car tearing across the camera’s view and smashed into a building. how could mckenzie have gone from sober to carfule driving to hitting a wall at speeds of 100 mph in a such a short space of time.
mckenzie had been to strongsville progress drive business park and she knre exactly where and when she had to put her fuzzy prada slipper down on the accelerator in order to kill everyone in the car.
her cell phone records held evidence that she had visited the area a few days before with the intent to kill ,scouting out the scene of the future crime, she chose the area and the time early in the morning before any witnesses would be around.
this plan did not involve davion, davion only needed a ride home and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
mckenzie did not think about him in the back seat she treated him only as an item of luggage and had to be reminded by the judge of his tragic death when she reading out her statement in court further evidence of the callous and cold way in which she’d snuffed out out two young lives.
the judge had no sympathy describing her as literal “hell on whells “
” this was not reckless driving,the was murder, mckenzie decided death was the ultimate goal that day and she alone made that decisision for dominic and davion”
mckenzie shirilla was found guilty and was sentenced to two life sentences for the murders to be served concurrently .( 15 years to life)