Mackenzie Shirilla’s father says there isn’t any approach the previous teenager murdered her boyfriend and one other individual on goal when she sped her automobile right into a brick wall at over 100 mph with the 2 trapped inside, RadarOnline.com can report.
Steve Shirilla insists his daughter is harmless of homicide, and provides that if she needed Dominic Russo lifeless, she may have killed a number of different methods.
Mackenzie was 17 when she murdered her 21-year-old boyfriend, Russo, and their pal Davion Flanagan, 19, within the horrific crash that befell on July 31, 2022.
She is presently serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life after being convicted in August 2023 of homicide, aggravated vehicular murder and different fees, however has lengthy maintained that she suffered a medical emergency behind the wheel of her Toyota Camry, and drove it proper into the constructing.
And her father believes her.
“She was 17. She’s a dumb child. She didn’t do it on goal,” Steve stated on the podcast True Crime This Week. “I’ve requested her, ‘Did you do that on goal?’ And he or she’s [said], ‘No.'”
Steve insisted that even when she was indignant at Russo, there was no approach she would punish their mutual buddy Flanagan as nicely.
“I’d suppose if my daughter was that mad, that mad at that boy to wish to kill him that approach, Davion would have by no means been within the automobile,” Steve added. “That is unnecessary.”
Apart from, if Mackenzie actually needed to kill her boyfriend, Steve revealed all she would have wanted to do was seize one of many many weapons he had mendacity round his residence.
“If she was going to do this to Dom, there have been weapons throughout that child’s home,” Steve defined. “If she was going to kill him, that may make extra sense to me.”
Mackenzie’s dad is just not denying his daughter had a task within the deaths of her pals, however says the homicide fees had been unwarranted.
“One thing occurred in that automobile. Nobody’s ever going to know. She’s harmless of the fees they put upon her,” he stated. “[It] ought to have been juvenile vehicular murder, two counts, and we’d have went from there.”
Prosecutors argued the accident was a botched murder-suicide try, pointing to Mackenzie’s fractured relationship with Russo, together with threatening textual content messages made simply weeks earlier than the accident during which she eerily foreshadowed dying in a automobile.
Mackenzie and Russo had been combating for months beforehand, and Russo had not too long ago despatched her a devastating breakup textual content.
The bickering apparently continued, culminating in a textual content trade during which each lovers accused the opposite of “attempting to finish” their life.
“Now I’ve to look ahead to you ending my life any time we argue like how am I not speculated to be afraid,” Shirilla texted Russo on July 17.
It isn’t clear precisely what set off this specific argument, however Russo fired again, “Kenzie (you) f–king tripping is all ima say”, earlier than including, “(You) threaten to finish my life on a regular basis.”
Shirilla texted again a creepy trace of what was to return, solely on this case, she accused Russo of planning on doing the injury.
“All I care about is you attempting to finish my life and put it in your hand on the steering wheel and attempting to finish it,” Shirilla shrieked, following that up with, “No one does that to someone they love.”
Within the early morning hours of July 31, Shirilla sped her automobile right into a constructing within the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, killing her passengers. When first responders arrived on the scene, they discovered the automobile cut up in half, with Shirilla wedged between the driving force’s seat and the door. Russo and Flanagan had been lifeless on arrival.
“This was not reckless driving, this was homicide,” a choose stated when delivering her verdict in 2023. “She had a mission, and he or she executed it with precision. The choice was demise.”