The terrifying wreck sent shockwaves throughout a tight-knit community. When emergency responders arrived, they found a mangled mess of metal—with all three people unconscious and two dead on arrival. Shirilla was airlifted to a local hospital, where she underwent multiple surgeries. But as detectives looked further into the case and discovered she had no memory of the tragedy, a new, more haunting question emerged.
The Crash, a new documentary from Gareth Johnson, further unpacks the harrowing case, which garnered national attention and has remained a polarizing topic within the Strongsville community. Out May 15 on Netflix, it mixes in archival body-cam footage, new surveillance video, social media clips, and interviews with friends, family members, and investigators—and an exclusive interview with Mackenzie Shirilla, speaking for the first time about the incident.
“I think it's sort of the worst thing that could happen to you as a parent,” Johnson says. “There's lots of warnings in this film about when things go wrong, and how badly things go wrong.”
As soon as he heard about Shirilla’s story, Johnson says, he “wanted to flip my experience on its head and understand the tragic event from the perspective of the family and friends around it.”
Through these interviews, Johnson provides a foundation for Shirilla and Russo’s four-year relationship. As students at Strongsville High School, the pair had “planned to get married,” according to Shirilla’s father, and remained mostly inseparable, spending most of their time cooking, purchasing clothing, and spending time outside their houses. Shirilla established herself as a TikTok influencer (and a bit of a “mean girl,” as Dom’s friends in the documentary share) who sampled clothing products for her large following.
The night of the crash
On the night of the crash, Shirilla, Russo, and Flanagan hung out together at a graduation party. At 5:30 a.m., the trio got into Shirilla’s car to presumably head back home. With Dom in the passenger seat and Davion in the back, Mackenzie started driving, turning from Pearl Road into Progress Drive in a controlled and deliberate manner before accelerating to 100 miles per hour.
Throughout the narrative, Johnson never flinches in his portrayal of the wreck, unleashing footage of investigators approaching the car and the victims’ families. Later, he replays multiple surveillance shots of Shirilla’s speeding Camry that capture the reverberating shotgun sound it makes when slamming into bricks. The point, he says, was to create discomfort—to put you into the same shoes as his interview subjects when they first saw and heard the footage during her trial.
Shirilla’s motive was trickier to parse.
That information proved valuable in the trial, as did a variety of social media videos that depict Shirilla showing little remorse before and after the tragedy—including a record of her boasting about a clothing brand deal in the wake of her friends’ funerals. In defense, the Shirilla family’s lawyer opted for a bench trial instead of a jury trial, and prevented Mackenzie from taking the stand, hoping her blackout condition—and the sheer fact of unknowability in the final moments—would be enough to prove her innocence. Ultimately, that proved costly.
"To the families of Dom and Davion, I am so deeply sorry," she read in a statement after the sentencing. "I hope one day you can see how I'd never let this happen or do it on purpose. I wish I could remember what happened.”
Mackenzie Shirilla —Courtesy of NetflixMackenzie Shirilla's interview
It turns out, she can’t. When she eventually agrees to go on camera with a lawyer present, Shirilla offers little new information, reiterating her loss of memory around that night—and specifically that crucial pocket of time in the car itself. “We still had the opportunity to ask her some hard questions around that,” Johnson says. “There's obviously a lack of memory of the event itself that’s a frustration, and it leaves the black hole still in place. We don't really know.”
Even with the evidence and implications, what remains is that black hole. But Johnson hopes the documentary can bring to light the challenges associated with parenting teenagers and the way that social media can be twisted and distorted in police investigations and turn the public’s perception. “We felt, after talking to everybody, that there's actually something more layered and more nuanced, but more gripping than has been portrayed before,” Johnson says.
In thinking back on her time in Strongsville, Scott’s biggest takeaway from this case might just be how much of the community remains affected by such a senseless decision. “You just realize that the legacy of these events continues,” she says, “and it will stay with them—all of these people—for the rest of their lives.”
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