Netflix’s The Crash Full Recap

Netflix’s The Crash, the new Gareth Johnson documentary about the 2022 fatal Strongsville, Ohio collision that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan, gives Mackenzie Shirilla her first-ever on-camera interview from the Ohio Reformatory for Women. She still says she has no memory of the five seconds before her Toyota Camry hit a brick building at 100 miles per hour. Prosecutor Tim Troup walks through the black box data that helped a Cuyahoga County judge call it murder. The film also includes a phone recording Dom made of Mackenzie days before the crash that lands like a closing argument all by itself.

(The following is a recap of Netflix’s The Crash documentary, with full spoilers including the trial outcome and current appeals status.)

What happens in Netflix’s The Crash documentary?

The 90-minute film reconstructs the July 31, 2022 crash that killed Mackenzie Shirilla’s boyfriend Dominic “Dom” Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan in Strongsville, Ohio, then follows the investigation that turned a presumed accident into a double-murder conviction. Director Gareth Johnson stitches together bodycam, surveillance video, cell phone recordings, courtroom footage, and interviews with families and investigators on every side of the case.

The structure works in three rough acts. The night itself comes first: a graduation party, three teenagers in a Toyota Camry at 5:30 a.m., a controlled turn from Pearl Road onto Progress Drive, then full-throttle into a brick wall. Then the police work that ruled out a long list of explanations (impairment, mechanical failure, panic) and landed on premeditation. Finally the bench trial, the verdict, the appeals, and Mackenzie’s first on-camera comments since being incarcerated.

Johnson does not soften the wreck. He plays the surveillance footage of the Camry’s last half-mile and the audio of the impact more than once, and he stays with the families when they first hear it. (In our viewing, the second pass of that surveillance clip was harder to sit through than the first; the film knows that and uses it.)

Who was Mackenzie Shirilla, and what was her relationship with Dom Russo?

Mackenzie Shirilla, Strongsville, Ohio, was a 17-year-old recent Strongsville High School graduate, TikTok influencer with clothing brand deals, and Dom Russo’s girlfriend of roughly four years at the time of the crash. The two had moved in together just weeks before, after Mackenzie graduated. Her father tells Johnson the pair “planned to get married.”

Dom Russo, 20, of Strongsville, comes through the film as the entrepreneurial one of the friend group: stocks, crypto, plans for a clothing line of his own. His father Frank Russo and his mother Christine Russo carry most of the speaking time on the Russo side. The film opens up his last morning with a small detail that hits harder later: he texted his father “Love you dad” at some point that early morning.

Davion Flanagan, 19, of Strongsville, is the friend who was not even supposed to be in the car. A high school football standout whose college and NFL plans ended with a torn ACL and UCL his senior season, he was adopted at age 8 along with his two younger sisters. He had planned to ride home with his friend Bubba that night, then changed his mind. Bubba remembers Davion hugging him before they parted ways and saying “I love you.”

Friends in the documentary describe Mackenzie’s reputation in plain terms. Dom’s friends call her a “mean girl.” His family describes a relationship that swung between affection and conflict, with allegations of physical abuse going back roughly six months before the crash. My read is that Johnson is careful to let those voices accumulate rather than editorialize; by the time the trial arrives, the picture has been built witness by witness.

What did investigators find at the crash site in Strongsville, Ohio?

First responders found a mangled Toyota Camry embedded in the side of a brick commercial building, with all three occupants unconscious and Dom and Davion dead on arrival. Mackenzie was airlifted out and underwent multiple surgeries. Marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms were also discovered concealed in her belongings at the scene.

The case began as a tragic single-vehicle accident and stayed that way until two pieces of evidence shifted it. The toxicology came back negative for alcohol and psilocybin and positive only for THC, which by itself was not enough to support an impaired-driving theory. Then a forensic auto investigator went through the Camry and found that the steering, brakes, accelerator, and tires had all been working properly. No stuck pedal. No mechanical failure.

The piece that broke the case open was surveillance video. Strongsville police pulled footage from a building along Progress Drive that captured the car’s final half mile. The car makes a controlled turn off Pearl Road, then accelerates in a straight line. The Camry’s event data recorder logged the accelerator at 100 percent for the full five seconds of pre-crash data, with no attempt to brake, and the steering wheel moving slightly left, then right, then straightening before impact. That clip is what got Strongsville police on the phone with Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor Tim Troup.

Why did prosecutors charge Mackenzie Shirilla with murder instead of vehicular homicide?

Because the evidence indicated the crash was deliberate, not negligent, and because witnesses described a specific motive built around the deteriorating relationship with Dom. Troup, walking the camera through the case file, calls it “prior calculation.”

The motive evidence arrived in pieces. Dom’s brother Angelo Russo came forward in September 2022 and told detectives Dom had tried to break up with Mackenzie multiple times that July. Another witness reported that about two weeks before the crash, Mackenzie had threatened to crash a car with Dom in it. A family friend had even heard her screaming about crashing the car over the phone during one of those July incidents, after Dom asked to be picked up because he felt trapped in the passenger seat.

Then there was the recording Dom himself made on his phone just days before the crash: Mackenzie banging on his door, demanding to be let in, threatening to slash his tires and hurt him. That clip would become one of the most consequential pieces of evidence in the trial. Mackenzie was arrested on November 4, 2022, on two counts of aggravated murder, with felonious assault and aggravated vehicular homicide added later. Twelve felony counts in total.

How did the bench trial unfold and why was the POTS defense rejected?

Mackenzie, tried as an adult, opted for a bench trial in August 2023, meaning Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo (no relation to Dom) would decide the verdict alone, no jury. The defense, led by attorney James McDonnell, centered on Mackenzie’s 2017 diagnosis of POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a blood-pressure disorder that can cause sudden fainting. Mackenzie did not take the stand.

The prosecution’s counterargument was the black box data, and it was effective. A POTS blackout cannot produce a controlled turn, sustained 100 percent throttle over five seconds, and small steering corrections. Those inputs require active engagement. The judge agreed in her ruling, calling the driving “controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.”

The other half of the prosecution case was character and conduct. Christine Russo testified about the phone recording. The state also brought in social media posts Mackenzie made after the crash that suggested she was unbothered, including videos of her and her friends dressed as zombies for Halloween, plus reporting that she boasted about a clothing brand deal in the weeks following her friends’ funerals. (The Halloween costumes were three months out from a crash she allegedly could not remember; the prosecution let the judge sit with that timing.)

“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” Judge Russo said before announcing the verdict on August 14, 2023. Mackenzie was found guilty on all 12 counts and sentenced to two concurrent terms of 15 years to life, with a note from the bench that she believed there was “a very good likelihood” Mackenzie would spend the rest of her life in prison.

What does Mackenzie Shirilla say in her first prison interview?

About an hour into the documentary, Mackenzie sits down on camera with her lawyer just off-frame and gives her first-ever interview, repeatedly insisting she had no intent to kill anyone and pointing to her POTS diagnosis as a possible explanation. She maintains she has no memory of the crash itself.

The interview is striking for how careful it is. She circles back to the same phrases. She consults her lawyer before her final answer. “I just want to make sure I’m big on the no intent,” she says. “There was no intent whatsoever. I have excessive amounts of remorse for Dominic, Davion, both of their families. This was not intentional and I will do everything I can to prove that to the world and the families.”

Why she agreed to sit for it at all is the read I keep going back to. The appeals were running on borrowed time when the documentary was being filmed, and an on-camera interview gives her a public defense in the only forum still open to her. Whether the film accepts that defense is a separate question, and Johnson very deliberately does not answer it. Producer Angharad Scott frames the whole project around the gap: “There are those five seconds when no one knows what went on in that car.” The interview does not close that gap. It just lets Mackenzie speak into it.

Where is Mackenzie Shirilla now, and what happened with the appeals?

Mackenzie Shirilla is currently incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, serving 15 years to life, with her first parole hearing scheduled for September 2037. Her appeals have not gone well.

Her legal team filed an initial appeal shortly after the September 2023 sentencing, citing clerical errors and what they argued was insufficient evidence. Judge Russo denied it on the grounds it came too late. A subsequent appeal was also denied, with a March 2026 ruling upholding the denial because the filing came one day past the 365-day deadline. The Ohio Supreme Court then declined jurisdiction altogether.

Her parents Natalie and Steve Shirilla appear throughout the documentary and continue to dispute key pieces of the prosecution’s case, including the Russo family’s account of the months leading up to the crash. The film does not adjudicate that dispute. The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office responded to the Ohio Supreme Court decision with a single line: that they were pleased the court declined to hear it. That is the legal end of the road, at least until 2037.

What is the closing scene of The Crash?

The documentary closes on the people the crash left behind, with producer Angharad Scott’s voice carrying the final beat: “You just realize that the legacy of these events continues, and it will stay with them, all of these people, for the rest of their lives.” Johnson cuts to the families one last time, mostly in silence, then to the empty stretch of Progress Drive.

The last interview the film lingers on is Davion Flanagan’s father Scott, talking about the Davion Flanagan Memorial Scholarship Fund the family established after their son’s death. He says, “People are going to know his name and people are going to know his heart.” It’s the only line in the documentary that sounds like it’s trying to build something forward instead of trying to account for something behind.

Then the surveillance clip plays one more time, abbreviated. Headlights down Progress Drive. The impact. Nothing after.