Netflix's The Crash revisits Ohio crash that became double murder case

A car tearing into a brick building at about 100 miles per hour ended with Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan dead on the pavement in Strongsville, Ohio, and Mackenzie Shirilla alive, badly injured, and at the center of a murder case that still divides viewers. Netflix’s The Crash began streaming May 15 and puts that July 31, 2022 scene back under the microscope.

The documentary revisits the crash near Progress Drive and Alameda Drive, where Shirilla, then 17 and a recent Strongsville High School graduate, was driving Russo and Flanagan home after a graduation gathering. Shirilla and Russo had been in a relationship for roughly four years and had recently moved in together. Police and emergency responders found Russo and Flanagan dead at the scene, while Shirilla was airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries.

What the film adds is not a new verdict, but a new package of material. Netflix says the feature uses bodycam footage, surveillance video, cellphone recordings, courtroom footage and interviews with the families to reconstruct the night and the investigation. It also includes Shirilla’s first on-camera interview from prison, where Netflix says she told filmmakers she has no memory of the period just before the crash. That matters because the public fight around this case has always centered on intent, on whether the wreck was a fatal mistake or a calculated act.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors answered that question with a 12-count indictment that included four murder charges, four counts of felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, drug possession and possession of criminal tools. Shirilla waived a jury and was tried in a bench trial before Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, who found her guilty on all counts on August 14, 2023 and sentenced her to life in prison with parole eligibility after 15 years. The Ohio Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions on September 26, 2024, and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to review the appeal on April 30, 2025.

Even after the conviction and the failed appeal, the case remains a magnet for argument because the evidence has always been read through two different lenses. Prosecutors pointed to a toxic relationship, threats and earlier erratic driving allegations; the defense has argued that a medical condition and other evidence could have changed the outcome. The Crash does not settle that split. It brings the crash, the trial record and Shirilla’s prison interview into one feature-length frame, leaving the same hard question that has followed the blacktop and brick wall from the start: accident, or intent?