A 17-year-old Ohio girl who prosecutors say deliberately drove her car into a brick wall at 100 mph, killing her boyfriend and a friend, had a relationship so toxic that text messages reveal she once told him she wanted to “bang my head on the wall till I’m dead” and he later wrote that “there isn’t very much time on Earth” just weeks before the fatal crash.
The newly surfaced communications between convicted murderer Mackenzie Shirilla and Dominic Russo, 20, paint a chilling portrait of a volatile on-again, off-again romance marked by jealousy, manipulation, and escalating threats, according to a detailed analysis of thousands of pages of messages entered into evidence during her 2023 trial.
Shirilla was found guilty by a judge of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, and other charges for the July 31, 2022 crash that killed Russo and their friend Davon Flanigan. She was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility starting in 2037.
The case has drawn renewed attention following the Netflix documentary “The Crash,” in which Shirilla insists from behind bars that she is not a monster, that she loved Dom, and that she has no memory of the crash, claiming she must have blacked out due to a medical condition called POTS.
But prosecutors argued she intentionally crashed the car, noting she never braked, and pointed to evidence that Russo was trying to break up with her in the weeks before his death. The text messages, obtained through a Cellebrite cell phone extraction, reveal the couple’s deeply troubled dynamic.
In January 2020, when the couple were still in high school, Shirilla bombarded Russo with messages demanding attention. “Let me come in,” she wrote with a sad face. When he refused, saying she needed to go home after school, she responded in all caps: “What? You can do this to me.”
When Russo said she was smothering him, Shirilla replied, “I just want to bang my head on the wall till I’m dead.” Russo responded with chilling indifference: “To be honest, this s** has happened so many times I just don’t care anymore.”
The couple broke up and reconciled constantly. In March 2020, after Shirilla demanded he spend more time with her, Russo wrote, “I think we need some time apart.” She erupted, demanding he answer the phone and declaring, “We not going on a break.”
By summer 2021, the fights had escalated. When Russo refused to give her free marijuana, Shirilla wrote, “Why would I want to go on vacation with someone that can’t even give me one gram free weed?” She had THC in her system at the time of the crash.
By January 2022, the power dynamic appeared to shift, with Shirilla becoming increasingly aggressive. She set timers for Russo to respond, writing, “Dom, I would start texting right now unless you want problems.” When he tried to discuss her provocative social media posts, she dismissed him: “If you can’t handle the bad b, then bleep and leave.”
The most ominous messages came in July 2022, just weeks before the crash. On July 2, Shirilla wrote, “You’re a liar and will always be one.” Russo responded, “Kenzie, I’m not arguing with you. It’s a waste of life.”
Then came the breakup text that now seems prophetic. “Kenzie, you know I love you, but I don’t think we should be together at this point,” Russo wrote. “There isn’t very much time on Earth. You know, I’d like to think we could stop fighting, but it’s a breakup fight every week.”
Just two weeks before the crash, a witness reported that Shirilla threatened to crash the car while Russo was on the phone with her. In subsequent texts, Shirilla accused him of trying to end her life, writing, “Yesterday, you almost ended my life or could have ended my life.”
Russo denied the accusation, saying, “I didn’t try to do anything.” But Shirilla pressed, “One more reply that is not trying to fix this, I’m blocking you.” She later added, “Somebody who loves me would never do that. Never.”
The final text messages in the report are from Shirilla to Russo on July 30, 2022, around 1:30 a.m., telling him to turn something down because it was “annoying and loud.” Just hours later, she would accelerate her car to 100 mph, sail over a curb, through a business sign, and into a brick wall, killing both young men.
Shirilla has maintained her innocence, claiming she blacked out and has no memory of the crash. Her family has suggested she suffers from POTS, a condition that can cause dizziness and fainting, but no official medical diagnosis was presented at trial.
The judge who convicted her rejected the blackout defense, citing evidence of her reckless driving history and lack of remorse. The text messages, now public, offer a window into a relationship that prosecutors say ended in murder.
“This is just interesting perspective, a sad perspective on what was maybe going on behind the scenes that may have contributed in some way to McKenzie Shirilla’s decision to deliberately crash that car,” said Jesse Weber, host of the Law and Crime network’s “Sidebar” program, which analyzed the messages.
The full trove of nearly 32,000 pages of text messages is available on the Law and Crime Plus app, offering a disturbing look at a teenage romance that spiraled into tragedy. Shirilla remains incarcerated, her next parole hearing set for 2037.
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