Mackenzie Shirilla Drives The Crash Documentary to Friday Premiere
Netflix’s the crash documentary premieres Friday and returns to the July 31, 2022 Strongsville crash that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. The film puts Mackenzie Shirilla back at the center of a case that ended in a murder conviction and years of dispute over intent.
Strongsville crash at 100 mph
100 mph was the speed police and prosecutors said Shirilla reached before driving into the large, brick Plidco Building in Strongsville. The crash happened around 5:30 a.m. while she was driving Russo, 20, and Flanagan, 19, to Russo’s home from a friend’s house.
45 minutes later, police arrived to find the car with severe damage and full airbag deployments. All three people were trapped in the car unconscious and not breathing, and Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene.
Brakes never applied
The car’s event data recorder later showed Shirilla’s right foot pressed to the accelerator’s full extent and the brakes never applied before impact. Prosecutors said that evidence matched their claim that she drove the car into the building intentionally and never hit the brakes.
A friend on the phone with Russo told investigators he heard Shirilla say, “I will crash this car right now,” during a fight two weeks before the crash. Prosecutors also said she had made increasingly violent and threatening comments before the collision, including an alleged threat to crash while driving with Russo as a passenger.
August 14, 2023 verdict
On Aug. 14, 2023, Shirilla, then 19, was found guilty in a bench trial of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, one count of drug possession and one count of possessing criminal tools. She was arrested on Nov. 4, 2022.
The documentary arrives after that verdict and after her lawyers’ unsuccessful appeal efforts, with Shirilla’s family maintaining her innocence. That split leaves the film with a built-in fault line: prosecutors treated the crash as deliberate, while her side has never accepted that account.
For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: this documentary is not revisiting an old accident so much as reopening a case file that already produced a conviction. It will likely pull the widest attention from people who want the evidence sequence, not the tabloid framing, because the recorder data and the 100 mph allegation are what make this story move.
