After Mackenzie Shirilla was arrested in connection to the fatal car crash that killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and friend Davion Flanagan, her dad went down to the police station to yell at the officers for arresting the “dumb 18-year-old.”
The Strongsville Police Department arrested Mackenzie, now 21, around 2:45 p.m. on November 4, 2022. Less than an hour later, her father, Steven Shirilla, arrived at the police station to find out what was happening and to make sure his daughter didn’t speak to police.
According to body camera footage obtained by People, Steven arrived at the station and spent three minutes berating officers.
When one officer told Steven that Mackenzie could legally speak for herself since she was 18, the father responded, “Yeah, but she’s a dumb 18-year-old.”
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Steven also insisted that he needed to speak to Mackenzie before he left. “I need to speak to my daughter because you guys aren’t allowed to speak to her at all,” he said. “That’s from the lawyer, he does not want you speaking to her at all.”
The father’s angry comments continued when he criticized the police’s decision to arrest Mackenzie on the weekend and in public instead of calling him and asking for her to be brought to the station. “It’s unbelievable, I mean she’s 18,” Steven said.
An officer explained that Mackenzie was arrested on that day because that was when the warrant had been signed by the judge.
Steven continued to escalate the interaction when he accused police of having a “creeper out on the front lawn watching” him at his home. However, it’s not clear what exactly he was referring to.
Police went on to deny Steven’s demands to see Mackenzie because she was a legal adult, and they added that she was not allowed to speak to anyone.
“Well, I need to speak to my daughter so that she understands not to say anything to you guys,” Steven responded.
After the officers said that Mackenzie had to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in order to speak to anyone, Steven eventually started to leave.
“She’s not allowed to speak to you guys, I’m telling you that,” he yelled as he began to leave. Steven made sure to get the final word in by saying, “Don’t ask her any questions.”
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The fatal car crash took place on July 31, 2022 in Strongsville, Ohio. At the time, Mackenzie was driving nearly 100 mph before the vehicle ran into a brick building and Russo, 20, and Flanagan, 19, were killed.
Mackenzie was convicted of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and one count each of drug possession and possessing criminal tools in 2023 in connection to the incident.
She was sentenced to two concurrent sentences of 15 to life and is currently in custody at the Ohio Reformatory for Women.
Her story has regained national interest after it was documented in Netflix’s May documentary The Crash, in which she expressed her remorse for the crime and insisted she never tried to kill Russo, 20, and Flanagan, 19.
