The Text That Exposed Mackenzie Shirilla: What She Asked for After Killing Her Boyfriend in a 100 MPH Crash

In the days after a crash that killed two young men and left a community searching for answers, Mackenzie Shirilla was doing what grieving girlfriends do — posting tributes online, visiting the grave, publicly mourning the boyfriend she said she loved.

And then she sent a text that changed everything.

A Request Nobody Expected

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In August 2023, more than a year after the fatal crash in Strongsville, Ohio, Shirilla reached out to Dominic Russo’s brother, Angelo, with a specific and deeply unsettling request. According to a 2024 Ohio Court of Appeals opinion obtained by PEOPLE, she asked him to go into Dominic’s room, find photos of the two of them from his desk, and place them inside his casket.

The reason she gave was simple. She wanted him to be with her forever.

“So he can be with me forever,” she wrote.

It was the kind of message that reads differently depending on what you already know about the night of July 31, 2022 — the night Shirilla, then 17, drove her sedan into a brick wall at nearly 100 mph in Strongsville, Ohio, killing Russo, 20, and their friend Davion Flanagan, 19, instantly. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene. Shirilla was hospitalized with multiple injuries and said she could not remember what happened.

What the Evidence Said

Shirilla and her parents have maintained from the beginning that the crash was not intentional — that a medical episode caused by postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, known as POTS, caused her to black out behind the wheel.

Prosecutors told a different story. At her 2023 bench trial, they argued the act was premeditated — that Shirilla intended to kill Russo because of the state of their relationship. Car data showed she floored the accelerator and never touched the brake in the five seconds before impact.

Angelo Russo told police that his brother and Shirilla had broken up multiple times throughout their four-year relationship, and that in the days before the crash, Dominic had been seriously considering ending things for good. Dominic’s mother and friends of the couple echoed the same assessment — the relationship had been troubled, and things were unraveling.

A Verdict and a Sentence

The judge ultimately ruled the crash was premeditated. Shirilla was convicted on all 12 felony charges against her, including murder and aggravated vehicular homicide, and sentenced to two concurrent life terms. She will not be eligible for parole until 2037.

At sentencing, prosecutors pointed to a TikTok video Shirilla posted on Halloween — months after the crash — showing her dressed in a costume with horror-style makeup alongside two friends. They argued it demonstrated a fundamental lack of remorse.

Her multiple appeals have since been denied.

A Story Now Reaching a New Audience

The case has resurfaced in public conversation following the release of The Crash, a Netflix documentary that revisits the events of that night, the investigation that followed and the trial that ended with Shirilla behind bars.

In the documentary, she is seen crying at Dominic Russo’s grave. Online, in the days after the crash, she wrote that he was “the last person to deserve this.”

And in a text to his brother, she asked to put her photos in his casket so he could be with her forever.

Dominic Russo was 20 years old. Davion Flanagan was 19. Neither of them made it out of that car.

Source: Compiled from various sources