On May 27, the Strongsville, Ohio, Police Department released roughly 32,000 text messages and recorded jail calls from the Mackenzie Shirilla case. The release reignited public interest in Shirilla’s murder convictions for the 2022 car crash that killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and friend, Davion Flanagan. Shirilla’s story — from the lead-up to the incident through her trial, sentencing, and life now in prison — is told in The Crash. The documentary was directed by Gareth Johnson and produced by Angharad Scott.
The release of evidence came as no surprise to the filmmakers, who had access to this information while producing the film — it was made available to them by the Strongsville Police and the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department.
“None of this material is new,” the filmmakers say. “We had access to all the messages in the making of the documentary.”
Following the dump, those following the case have pored through the texts and recordings to discuss Shirilla’s state of mind. The filmmakers say their focus in reviewing these same messages, some of which are included in the documentary, was different: They were interested in understanding how investigators and prosecutors built their case. “We mainly looked at correspondence dating back a year before the crash,” they explain. “We examined the positive and negative exchanges within the relationships involved. We looked at the evidence from a position of neutrality.”
“When we make a documentary, we fact-check everything, and we do not take messages out of context. Social media doesn’t stick to these guidelines, so misinformation can quickly spread — and this isn’t helpful to anyone involved in this tragedy.”
The Crash is now streaming.
