Teenage girl sentenced to life in prison for ‘hell on wheels’ deadly car crash
An Ohio teenager was convicted for a deliberate 100mph “hell on wheels” crash that killed her boyfriend and friend.
Mackenzie Shirilla, 19, was found guilty on multiple counts of murder for the incident that killed Dominic Russo, 20, and Davion Flanagan, 19, last year.
Shirilla, who was 17 at the time of the crash, faces an automatic life sentence and will have to spend 15 years behind bars before she can apply for parole. She will be formally sentenced next week, reported Cleveland.com.
“She had a mission, and she executed it with precision. The decision was death,” said Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, who held the trial without a jury.
“Her actions were controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional and purposeful. This was not reckless driving. This was murder.”
The court was told that the crash took place at around 5.30am on 31 July 2022 at a building in a business park. Investigators say that Shirilla drove her 2018 Toyota Camry down a three-quarter mile road until it hit a speed of 100mph.
Data from the car’s computer and surveillance video showed that the steering wheel jerked to the right and then left before the vehicle left the road and crashed into the business.
The wreck was found by a passerby around 45 minutes later. When police arrived they found Russo and Flanagan dead, and Shrilla trapped in the driver’s seat with a fuzzy Prada slipper stuck to the accelerator.
The judge told the court that the final seconds of the incident proved that Shirilla acted with purpose.
“She morphs from responsible driver to literal hell on wheels,” she said.
Prosecutors showed a video taken weeks before the crash which showed Shrilla arguing with Russo and in which she threatened to key his car.
Following the crash, doctors stated that Shiilla expressed “grief, guilt and shame” about the crash, with prosecutors saying that she had demonstrated “consciousness of guilt”.
Her lawyers argued that feeling bad after a fatal crash did not make the driver a murderer and said that prosecutors had not proved she had not just lost control while driving recklessly.
