19-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla, who has been sentenced to life in prison for intentionally crashing her car into a brick wall to kill her boyfriend and another friend, paid tribute to him several times online less than a month after the murders.
According to Fox News, Ms Shirilla was found guilty of four counts of murder earlier this week in the July 2022 crash that killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and his friend Davion Flanagan, 19. She was reportedly smoking marijuana with the duo before she got behind the wheel and rammed the car into the brick wall of a warehouse in Cleveland, US, with no attempt to hit the brakes.
Mr Russo, who was in the passenger seat, and Mr Flanagan, who was riding in the back, were both declared dead at the scene, the outlet reported. Ms Shirilla, however, miraculously survived the crash and was found unconscious with her slippers still on the accelerator.
Weeks after the incident, Ms Shirilla, then 17, left more than a dozen bizarre tributes on his online obituary, writing that he was "the last person to deserve this". "You had such a perfect life ahead of you," she wrote on Mr Russo's obituary page last August.
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Separately, she even posted a picture of her and Mr Russo, posing at Universal Studios. "I miss you nug," she wrote under the post, as per the outlet. "I still feel like your just going to walk in the door any second. I miss your laugh your perfect smile. I feel your energy around me everyday i just wish it was physical. God u are the last person to deserve this you had such a perfect life ahead of you... i wish i told you all this more. Please wait for me," she added.
According to People, during the court hearing in Cleveland, prosecutors, however, said Ms Shirilla had gone on a "mission" to kill Mr Russo by purposefully driving her car 100 mph into a wall with her boyfriend inside. But her attorney argued that the teen was not trying to kill her passengers but simply lost control of her car.
On Monday, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo found Ms Shirilla guilty of all 12 charges against her, including murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, felonious assault and drug possession. As per the outlet, her conviction carries an automatic sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
