An Ohio judge on Monday found Mackenzie Shirilla, 19, guilty of murdering two people after a high-speed July 2022 car crash that left her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and his friend Davion Flanagan, 19, dead.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo held the four-day bench trial last week after Shirilla waived her right to a jury trial.
She found Shirilla guilty on all 12 charges against her, which included 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.
The conviction carries an automatic sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years, Cleveland.com reported.
Shirilla, who was 17 at the time of the crash, can be seen sobbing as the judge delivers the verdict in court footage streamed by Cleveland news channel WKYC (video below).
“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” Nancy Margaret Russo, who is not related to the victim, said in court moments before announcing her decision. “She had a mission and she executed it with precision. The decision was death.”
Jim McDonnell, the teenager’s attorney, asked the judge to find Shirilla guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide for driving recklessly and acquit her of the murder charges, saying the prosecution did not present enough evidence to prove that the crash was more than a tragic accident and “kids being kids,” according to Cleveland.com.
“We are really never going to know what happened in that car, much less prove with evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that ... present in the mind of Mackenzie was a specific intent to cause the death of her boyfriend and their friend,” he said.
McDonnell said that his client doesn’t remember the crash, and her mother testified during the trial that Shirilla has a medical condition that causes her to lose consciousness if her sodium levels are low.
Surveillance video, which was shown in court, shows Shirilla’s 2018 Toyota Camry driving in the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville. It slowly turns onto another road. Once on the new street, it accelerates suddenly. According to data from the car’s computer system, it was traveling at 100 mph, per Cleveland.com.
The car then jumped a curb, careened off a sign and then slammed into a brick warehouse, according to Cleveland.com.
The two men, who were in the vehicle with Shirilla, were pronounced dead at the scene. Shirilla was unconscious and not breathing when she was found trapped inside the car with the others, WKYC reported.
Shirilla was initially charged in juvenile court in November 2022 with purposely causing the accident, according to local outlet WJW, though prosecutors later decided to try her as an adult.
The judge said that the final seconds of the security footage swayed her verdict.
“She morphs from responsible driver to literal hell on wheels,” she said.
Shirilla’s attorney argued in court that prosecutors never proved that she purposely crashed the car, and that she could have lost control of the vehicle, local outlet WJW reported.
“It’s not clear, it’s not explicit to draw the inference that she acted purposely,” McDonnell told the judge, per the outlet.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in court that the car’s computer showed “that there was no attempt to slow down or stop, that it was full speed into a building,” WKYC reported.
Prosecutors also said data from Shirilla’s phone indicated that she had driven near the site of the crash a few days prior to the incident. Her phone also had a video filmed prior to the crash in which she threatened to key her boyfriend’s car during a heated argument, per Cleveland.com.
McDonnell questioned the relevancy of the video. Prosecutors argued that Shirilla crashed the car in order to end her tumultuous relationship with her boyfriend. As for Flanagan, prosecutors say he unfortunately “just got in the wrong seat that night.”
“Davion was just cargo,” Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim Troup said in closing arguments Thursday. “Whatever she had in for Dominic, [Flanagan] was just along with his friend and got sucked into a toxic relationship.”
Friends of the teens also testified in court that Shirilla, Dominic Russo and Flanagan had been smoking marijuana prior to the crash. Shirilla had THC in her blood above the legal limit under Ohio law.
Jaime Flanagan, Davion Flanagan’s mother, told WKYC after the verdict: “There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t miss our son and justice was served for him today. But honestly there’s no winners here. There’s no winners here today.”
Shirilla is due back in court for sentencing on Aug. 21.