CLEVELAND — The trial for a Strongsville teen accused of murder following a deadly crash that occurred last July is underway.
Mackenzie Shirilla, 19, faces multiple charges – including murder, felonious assault and aggravated vehicle homicide – in connection with a deadly crash that killed two people in July of 2022.
Strongsville police say the crash happened at 6:15 a.m. on Sunday, July 31, 2022, near the intersection of Progress and Alameda. Upon their arrival, officers say they located a Toyota Camry “with severe damage and full airbag deployments.”
All three occupants inside the vehicle – including Shirilla – were unconscious, not breathing and trapped inside the vehicle. 19-year-old Davion Flanagan and 20-year-old Dominic Russo were both pronounced dead at the scene.
Shirilla, who was 17 years old at the time of the crash, was taken to the hospital via Metro Life Flight. She was arrested months later in November.
Monday, Shirilla appeared in court with her right arm wrapped in a sling.
As Prosecutor Tim Troup of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office began his opening argument -- narrating the details of the deadly crash -- Shirilla broke down into tears.
Troup presented that Shirilla was going 100 miles per hour in the moments before the crash, and showed surveillance footage of the high-speed incident to the courtroom.
The prosecution said Shirilla's behavior towards Russo in the weeks leading up to the crash was hostile. They cited a recorded incident where she showed up to his home threatening to call the police on him, and another incident in which a witness heard her threatening Russo's life.
“He went out to I-71 and pursued the car driven by the defendant, that he overtook that car as it pulled off to the side of the road," Troup shared. "He observed at that time the defendant striking Dominic Russo with both hands and that he overheard her make a statement, an admissible statement and she said, 'Dominic I’m going to crash this car.' We find that it is especially important to her state of mind just two weeks later when she used a car to kill Dominic Russo.”
Shirilla's defense said the crash was not purposeful, and there are many possibilities of how it happened.
"Is it just kids being kids?" Defense attorney James McDonnell asked aloud in the courtroom. "Is it Dominic grabbing the steering wheel? Is it Mackenzie maybe speeding and saying, 'oh my God, it's dark out, it's a light, I'm coming up to this, I better do something,' and she goes like that to avoid an accident, not acting purposely but in fact trying to avoid it. Is it sudden acceleration panic? Those are all possibilities."
McDonnell also said the side airbags going off in the final seconds before the crash could have contributed to the severity of the event.
"It occurred in about four-and-a-half, five seconds before," he explained. "It's a significant force, that it makes a huge sound. There's talcum powder or some type of powder that is let go. So, if they only have five seconds of recordings and those five seconds are all what happens after the airbag is deployed, how can you come to any conclusion other than if anything she's reckless?”
Interpretation will clearly be a point of contention in the trial.
The prosecution presented that Shirilla told a medical professional she wanted to die, and it was "her fault" for killing her boyfriend.
While Troup implied that showed intentionality with the crash, the defense claimed Shirilla was just expressing guilt by association because she happened to be the driver in the accident, but not that she wanted it to happen.
McDonnell said that Shirella was not suicidal, and he will produce friends and relatives to the courtroom that will share her good mental state in the days before the crash.
"Everybody was fine," he said. "Everything was fine."
After opening arguments, both sides began cross examining a few first responders to the crash scene while analyzing body camera video.
The prosecution said Dominic Russo's mother and brother will be testifying at some point in this trial.
3 News talked briefly with Shirilla's father, who appeared emotional, but told us he couldn't discuss the case because he's a witness.
This past April, Shirilla pleaded not guilty as the judge continued her bond at $500,000 and assigned the case to Judge Nancy Margaret Russo. The judge also ordered a no-contact order.
“That means yourself, your friends, your family members may not have any contact with the alleged victims’ families,” the judge told Shirilla.
The mothers of both victims were in court during the arraignment in April as one of them addressed the judge.
“This has been an absolutely devastating loss for our families,” Flanagan’s mother said, while adding, “we feel that Mackenzie is a threat to both herself and the community if she were to be released.”
3News' Ryan Haidet contributed to this report.