Mackenzie Shirilla's father Steve has been making headlines once again in the weeks since Netflix's The Crash turned his family into one of the most talked-about in America, continuing to fight his daughter's corner despite being placed on administrative leave from his teaching job at Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland.
Mackenzie, now 21, is serving two concurrent life sentences for the deaths of her boyfriend Dominic Russo, 20, and his friend Davion Flanagan, 19, after driving her Toyota Camry into a brick wall at 100mph in Strongsville, Ohio, in the early hours of July 31, 2022. Both passengers were killed instantly. Mackenzie survived with serious injuries and was the sole occupant of the vehicle to make it out alive.
She was convicted of 12 felony offences in August 2023, including murder, felonious assault and aggravated vehicular homicide, after prosecutors argued the crash was deliberate and premeditated. Black box data showed she had her foot on the accelerator at 100 percent for the entire five seconds before impact and never once touched the brakes. The judge described her as "literal hell on wheels" and concluded her actions were "controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional and purposeful."
Mackenzie has consistently maintained she has no memory of the crash and that a medical episode linked to a condition called POTS caused her to lose control. No medical records or expert testimony confirming the diagnosis were ever presented at trial. She will not be eligible for parole until 2037.
Her parents, Steve and Natalie, have stood firmly by her side throughout, appearing in the Netflix documentary to proclaim her innocence and facing significant public backlash as a result. Steve's school placed him on administrative leave following allegations of poor judgement connected to his comments in the film, with an investigation described as ongoing. He has since been speaking to various media outlets to put his side of the story, including an appearance on the True Crime This Week podcast hosted by journalist James Renner.
Meanwhile, text messages between Steve and Mackenzie from 2020 have gone viral on TikTok after the Strongsville Police Department released a fresh batch of case files. The exchanges show a father trying to coax his daughter home after what appears to have been a falling out, sending her repeated messages of reassurance and telling her she would not be in trouble. The texts have struck many online as unexpectedly tender given the public image of the Shirilla family that has emerged from the documentary.
Steve told the podcast he remains utterly convinced his daughter is innocent and offered a specific argument as to why he believes the crash could not have been a deliberate act, while the newly viral texts gave a glimpse of a father and daughter relationship that is clearly more complex than the headlines suggest. As he told host James Renner: "If she was going to do that to Dom, there were guns all over that kid's house. If she was going to kill him, that would make more sense to me. She was 17. She's a dumb kid. She didn't do it on purpose. And I would think if my daughter was that mad, that mad at that boy to want to kill him that way, Davion would have never been in the car."
