“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” the judge said before she read out Mackenzie Shirilla’s verdict Monday afternoon.
The reason why they say this was murder:
Two weeks before the crash, she allegedly threatened to crash her vehicle when she was driving with Russo because she was upset over a disagreement they had. Russo called his mother and asked to be picked up, and a friend ended up retrieving him. In a phone call with Russo, the friend allegedly overheard Shirilla say, “I will crash this car right now,” prosecutors said in court documents.
This isn’t a drunk driver, or a thrillseeker, this is someone with murderous intent.
Considering she was unconscious as well, sounds like it was a murder/suicide attempt.
Sounds more like a mental health issue tbh…
I agree 100 percent this is a child with some kind of inability to understand the consequences of her actions she should be placed in a care facility until she demonstrates the ability to make proper decision making ability
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In most US jurisdictions if you’re “just” trying to commit a felony, like purposely crashing your car at 100+ MPH (160+ KPH) to cause grievous bodily harm to others, and someone dies as a result that’s automatically elevated to murder.
It’ll depend on the jurisdiction. But ‘intent’ for murder does not mean “pre-planned”. Heat of the moment intention to do serious harm is enough for a murder conviction in the UK (and, I believe, the US).
In this case, the prosecution accused her of pre-planning as well as intent, and the jury agreed with one or both arguments.
Russo, the judge, delivered a scalding description of the case before she read out the verdict, saying Shirilla had a “mission” she executed with “precision” that fateful day — and “the mission was death.”
“The [crash] video clearly shows the purpose and intent of the defendant. She chose a course of death and destruction that day,” Russo said.
“She morphs from a responsible driver to literal hell on wheels as she makes her way down the street,” Russo said, saying Shirilla made a calculated decision to drive that morning, when not many people would be around, on an obscure route she did not routinely take.
Prosecutor Michael O’Malley told NBC affiliate WKYC of Cleveland that the crash video was damning, saying, “The intent was obvious upon seeing that video that there was only one goal.”
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I recently read that a 70mph accident is considered “unsurvivable.” Regrettably I don’t recall the source. Because people survive accidents that happen on 70mph speed limit highways all the time, I assume two things. 1. That the accident has to happen AT 70mph. And that 2, most people are able to slow down or perhaps the vehicle hits something first, glancing blow, that sort of thing, which brings the speed down, making it more survivable. So yeah, I think that makes 100mph suicide/murder.
I would suspect they are talking about a collision with a stationary object at 70 mph.
crash testing is done between 35 and 40 mph. At those speeds the car is usually undrivable after the test. Over that speed you risk damage to very expensive test equipment.
Murder laws can vary by country.
She murdered two people with the intent to at least cause significant harm. That’s enough on the state she was in, thank God. She deserves life in prison.
Sounds more like a suicide/self harm thing to me.
When you include an unconsenting person in the attempt, it is also murder.
Not a lawyer, but even if they consent isn’t it murder?
You can’t consent to murder, the best you could do is indemnify someone/an organisation against accidental death.
You can’t consent to murder
Genuine question - why not? If someone wants to be murdered, for whatever reason, would that not be them consenting?
You could try to argue some suicide/euthanasia case, but “murder” by definition is intentional death without the consent of the victim.
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There are cases of mutual murderer/suicide pacts where there’s shared responsibility and actions taken by each party but that wouldn’t have been possible when she was the only one in control of the car. Even if the boyfriend was suicidal, and there’s no reason to think he was from this article, the other passenger clearly wasn’t. IANAL either but I think that’s what the above comment was trying to get at.
It sounds much more like an abusive relationship. She was trying to punish him, regardless of the risk to herself.
…no, no, no… only WOMEN can be in abusive relationships.
At least that is the utter bullshit you would believe if you listened to the feminist/white knight rhetoric out there.
This would have been better if you left it untyped.
Clearly you don’t want to hear the truth of the general bias of the internet and society as a whole.
A good feminist supports male victims.
We don’t have good feminists. The ones we have left don’t want equality, they want favoritism. There is a massive difference between the two.
If you attempt to kill yourself and take other people with you, it’s commonly called murder/suicide. Killing people with intent is usually murder.
A woman kills family then kills self. Is it murder!!! Oh. No, just self-harm.
That’s not exactly what has happened here and derailing it using emotional hyperbole won’t help either.
Honestly, it’s very very similar. AFAICT she was trying to punish him. It has all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. And an all too common outcome.
If you’re trying to kill others along with you, it’s not just suicide, it’s also murder.
This is why suicidal people are dangerous, it’s a relatively small change from killing yourself, to killing others.
This is why pastry chefs are dangerous, it’s a relatively small change from baking your bread, to baking others.
This is why being baked while baking with a baker is dangerous. You get too baked and you might get baked by the baker for making bad cakes.
Baking bread and stuff is easier. Have you seen hot fat people have gotten? No way I am getting an adult into my oven.
Have suicidal ideation is in no way, shape or form the same as being the perpetrator of a murder-suicide. Neither is being suicidal a lead-in to becoming a murderer.
Driving a car at 100mph into a building is more than ideation. That’s attempted suicide.
What a ridiculous take.
As such, it is clear that suicides tend to have high levels of aggressive–destructive impulsive behaviours, generally referred to as impulsive–aggressive behaviours. These have been operationally defined in suicide studies as a tendency to react with animosity or overt hostility without consideration to possible consequences, when piqued or under stress.
Did you read anything else in that paper…? The words around that statement? Even the abstract?
Or did you google what you wanted to see and post the result, because that paper is not about people harming others whilst attempting suicide. It is barely tangentially about that.
(it’s about the impact of aggressive-impulsive tendencies on the suicide…r themselves)
No there may be a small chance of collateral damage, such as this case. But suicidal thinking does not make you think of killing others. You’re clearly lucky enough to have never had suicidal ideation, but it never comes near the kind of thoughts that want to kill others
It changes when it comes to acting. If you have the gun to your head, shooting someone telling you to stop is also highly likely.
Let’s see some stats on that one because being an abusive murder is a lot different than suicidality.
There is no correlation between her wanting to kill people and her potential suicidality. They just coincidentally line up in this case.
If you feel that way, you might be the dangerous one
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I have a relative who was recently given a DUI.
They went to the store, sober, and bought a handle of vodka (1.75 liters) consumed the vast majority, and drove around.
He wanted to die in a head on collision. Selfish fuck.
I don’t have a problem with people having the freedom to decide enough is enough, but don’t harm others in the process, at least more so than the death would cause. Especially innocent unrelated people.
Fucking hell that is horrible. And of course she’s the only one to survive. 100mph into a brick building has probably left her pretty physically fucked up and in constant pain. Hope she enjoys feeling that way in prison for the rest of her life.
She’ll spend 8 months in prison and appeal for a reduced sentence and get out on “good behavior” before she’s even served a quarter of her term. Don’t you know how the American legal system works?
Murder is a felony, so I believe you have to serve 80% of a sentence before being able to be eligible for parole
The bullshit sentences are the ones we mainly hear about, and many people have a bit of a confirmation bias because of it. But, you don’t have to look further than your own community to see that slaps on the wrist are not typical.
US citizens are the most incarcerated people on Earth, by an uncomfortable margin.
I can’t hear you over the sound of the affluenza defense being used.
You forgot the white woman modifier, you take a man’s sentence and divide by 4.
It’d likely the families of those she killed will be at every single parole hearing kicking up a fuss.
Murder with a car is often toned down to, “vehicular manslaughter”. It’s often times charged as a misdemeanor. I agree with you that it should always be a felony because it’s murder, but that’s not how the courts treat it.
Manslaughter, by definition, is not murder. It’s unintentionally causing the death of someone else.
It’s possible that this wasn’t intentional if her intention was to put her bf in the hospital, not literally kill him. But at 100 mph I doubt it.
Though I could see a psychotic 17 year old not thinking it through and assuming the boyfriend would survive, albeit crippled.
More of this. Also let’s start holding rich people accountable of crimes also.
I am truly sorry for the passengers. Lost life because of teenage perceived hardship is tragic.
From a different perspective, it seems incredibly impressive that anyone survived a deliberate head on collision with a brick wall (that appears to have barely buckled) at 100 MPH / 161 KMH.
Thanks for the Christianization of the speed units, God bless you
Survived and still standing on her feet…
Not just survived, but with everything intact. No missing limbs or massive head trauma. She’s wildly lucky in that reguard.
Something tells me the judge will make her feel a bit less lucky within a few days.
I’d be surprised if she gets out within 20 years
Or wildly unlucky, depending on how one looks at it.
Lucky or a very impressive feat of engineering in modern cars? 😱
Remind me why we allow teenagers to drive 3-ton vehicles again?
“Gotta get them teens to work. And no public transit options please, they make my money pile smaller.”
-CEO’s everywhere
Why do we allow most people to drive 3 ton vehicles
Right? I honestly can’t wait until self driving cars take up enough of the market share that manual driving cars will be outlawed (or at least getting insurance on them will be astronomically expensive)
Or public transit improves, actually freeing up space on the road
What dumb is that we can improve public transit today. Unlike self driving cars, there is no technological barrier. The only thing stopping us from improving public transit is that fact that humans (especially in North America) are selfish, greedy, easily manipulated, and apathetic.
Public transit doesn’t improve because not enough people don’t want to use public transit and not enough people want to use public transit because it doesn’t improve.
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Not the cars themselves but I think it’ll happen like this: self driving cars will eventually get good enough that they will have a lower accident rate in certain conditions, like highways. Insurance companies will push for self-driving-only lanes on the highway, while not lowering your rates but charging you extra for manual driving. Then it will be segments of highways, then certain surface streets, etc. Eventually you’ll only be driving the “last mile” if it’s a personal car or relying on a service that sends self-driving cars and drops you off on the corner. Manual driving on public streets will mostly disappear.
Not to mention that self driving cars will be the destruction of the environment.
If you don’t want to drive, try to use public transportation or possibly human powered vehicles such as bicycles. Cars are bad enough as is. The only reason I even drive is to go to work and the grocery store in my town with basically no public transportation other than taxis.
I have no clue how you came to the conclusion that self driving cars would be more harmful to the environment than human driven ones, but even if the number of cars on the road remained the sane (it would actually drastically decrease), and even if all self driving cars were ICEs, vehicle emissions would still drastically stop.
If every car was self driving, then every car would know the position of every other car around it and be able to communicate to every other car. Traffic jams would cease to exist, and potentially even stopping at intersections would go away too.
But, the reality is that once self driving cars reach that critical mass, owning a car won’t be a thing anymore. You’ll pay a service to shuttle you around. Hell, if the service was a public utility then it would be trivial to set up ride sharing for a reduced rate. That would be what drastically decreases the amount of cars on the road.
Because self driving cars would allow people who otherwise couldn’t drive for themselves to own yet another car on the road. Teenagers, elderly, people with chronic alcohol addiction, you get the idea.
I don’t fully buy the “no traffic jams or accidents” thing either. There is definitely the potential for there to be less, but what you are talking about is something that isn’t going to happen for ateast another decade. Surely you remember the Tesla crisis from the last year?
I can see ride sharing becoming a thing for the people under the poverty line, but realistically speaking, everyone is going to buy a car. There is no incentive for a billions of dollars company to put less cars on the road using ride sharing, some of them already sell you heated seats in the form of a monthly subscription.
You’re making the mistake of applying the behavior of people today with the behavior of people over a decade from now.
Truly autonomous vehicles would fundamentally change the way the world views transportation, it will just take a while to get to that point.
By the time we get to a critical mass of self driving cars, it’s very likely that owning cars won’t be a thing outside of the wealthy.
The organizations that will be running the transportation services will have a vested interest in keeping as few vehicles in a fleet as possible, thus removing vehicles from the road (if we haven’t reached that point by the time self driving cars are a real thing)
Also the idea that the people who couldn’t otherwise own a car would suddenly have $50k+ to go out and buy an autonomous vehicle is silly.
Remind the rest of us why anycunt needs a 3 ton personal vehicle again?
At risk of angering the vast majority of the fuck cars community, it’s generally because I live 30 minutes from my job by highway, and can’t afford to live within walking distance. And they won’t let us telework. I really really want to actually live close enough to bike.
So we have a large reoccurring expense that forces us to always have a job and stay productive in a modern society where this really isn’t necessary?
I’ll stick with my 1.2l, 50mpg shitbox thanks
Uh, I think society is pretty darn dependent on everyone working to sustain it.
The profit margins of the wealthy are dependent on everyone working 24/7 to sustain. Society can carry on just fine.
Because the vast majority of them don’t use the 3ton vehicle to commit murder.
You do know that adults use vehicles as murder weapons also, yeah?
I am sure they don’t.
Waukesha Christmas parade attack and the Nice, France attack?
The comment was on knowledge not events
So they can be exploited for cheep labor.
The same reason we all have a personal 3 ton vehicle: to ensure we remain bound to a culture of sprawling roads and fossil fuel consumption.
When I think back to how immature and reckless I was as a teenager I can’t believe I was legally allowed to drive and considered a full grown adult at the age of 18.
Remind me why we allow banks to control our economy again?
Awesome. Judge all teenagers because of a deranged one.
What’s your stance on 27 year olds with driver’s licenses?
Yeah buddy i’m going to judge all drivers, because i kinda sorta vaguely don’t want me or others to die!
Are you against gun control too?
I’m not, but it seems like you are, correct?
Why would i be against gun control? I also enjoy not randomly having my brains blown out.
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tbp the camry she drove was closer to 1.5 tons
Freedums!
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How much does a razer scooter weight?
So they can be exploited for cheap labor.
You’re not wrong. Being able to drive by 16 so that you can start working is the capitalist way.
A Camry weighs half of that, and regardless, she could have done this in any vehicle
Lol which vehicles weigh 3 tons. Aside from EVs. You mean 3 tons as in 6600 lbs right?
She was 18. That’s an adult.
She was 17. But I understand your point.
Legally sure, still immature and not someone who should be piloting a heavy vehicle capable of going 100 mph.
Most people aren’t, frankly.
You’re right and car rental companies agree with you as most of them won’t rent to anyone under 25.
Prosecutor: What gear were you in at the moment of impact?
Defendant: Gucci sweats and Reebok Classics.
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There are a lot of people in this post spouting their opinion on an article they very clearly did not read.
The mum of one of the dead put it well - justice was served but nobody won today.
Winning was not the goal anyway? Its not a game
Winning the trial was the goal. She was saying it’s a hollow victory nonetheless.
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Winning is always the goal. The definition does not just apply to games.
Jesus, I sympathize, this is awful…i was t-boned by a teen going 85 mph, I wish my attorneys had the same teeth this judge does
I’m sorry that happened… but that’s not why she said it. This girl accelerated full speed, without attempting to slow down at all, straight into a brick wall. Those teens probably weren’t trying to hit you, this girl very very very likely was trying to hit that wall and kill everyone in the car.
That’s my bad, I did a no-no and commented before I’d finished reading the whole article
All good; just leaving a comment so you know what really happened :)
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Wow the way she’s crying is disgusting, she’s just sorry for herself not for the deaths she caused. No remorse, only regret for getting sentenced
Wow the way she’s crying is disgusting, she’s just sorry for herself not for the deaths she caused. No remorse, only regret for getting sentenced
How do you know that? I don’t know about you but I’ve done things in anger that I felt genuine remorse for later.
Never killed anyone though, I suppose.
Because of her intent and crimes- she had genuine murderous intent as the judgement said. She seemed very cruel and unhinged according to the article and presented evidence and the video showed her crying due to the judgement.
It’s been two years since she murdered those people. She could easily feel true remorse now.
I’m in no way trying to excuse her actions, I just think it’s worth trying to do some level of empathizing for people. Not that what she did was in any way justified, but I can’t imagine trying to live with myself if I got angry enough to murder someone.
It’s all speculation and assumptions anyway ! We can see different things. I feel disgust and see regret and you may see someone possibly showing remorse. We just don’t know for sure either way.
Have a good day fellow fediperson
Have a good day fellow fediperson
You as well!
Crying when the sentence was read doesn’t say anything one way or the other about her feeling or not remorse because that specific moment is about what’s going to happen to her, not about others, so she’s crying for herself.
She almost certainly feels regret (which is entirelly about the consequences for herself), but it’s unclear that she feels remorse (which is about the consequences for others of her actions).
Those look like Rittenhouse tears to me.
You mean legitimate tears from someone who had trauma from successfully defending himself against attackers? Did you watch any of the trial?
Boo hoo I murdered two people boo hoo. Can I get medal now? Boo hoo boo hoo.
There, that is what I think of your bestie. Go Rittenhouse about it to your family and “friends”.
It’s been two years since she made that video, regardless of whether it was made before or after the crash.
I’m not trying to say that she is remorseful, only that we cannot say that she isn’t based solely on her actions two years ago.
Looks like a narcissist to me.
Sure seems like she had a lot of issues at 17, that’s for sure. Most 17-year-olds don’t murder their friends and boyfriends.
I find her family’s attitude toward the whole thing troubling. I know my family, if I were in this situation and they had the same evidence, would be telling me to plead guilty and take responsibility. I have a feeling that concept was never big in her upbringing or her family’s.
It’s tragic all the way down.
Again it’s tragic for the victims, not for her. Saying it’s tragic all the way down, is a false equivalence.
Again it’s tragic for the victims, not for her. Saying it’s tragic all the way down, is a false equivalence.
I don’t want to be argumentative, but there is no false equivalence in my position. I never tried to apply any equivalence. Things can be tragic without being equivalently tragic, and one thing being tragic does not take away the tragedy of something else.
I think one could argue that you’re falling prey to the fallacy of relative privation. “X is worse than Y, so we shouldn’t care about Y.”
Tragedy is not a zero sum game. It is absolutely tragic that those young men were murdered. It is tragic that their families lost their loved ones. It is also tragic that this young woman thought the proper solution to her problems was to attempt murder-suicide. It is tragic that she threw away any promise her own life held along with theirs. It is perhaps not tragic, but certainly sad and troubling, that her family seems to think she did nothing wrong.
Yes, it’s more tragic for the victims, but it her story is still a tragedy.
It is important to note that I am in no way trying to excuse her actions or argue for leniency. She murdered two people in a horrible and reckless action. There are consequences for that action beyond the direct ones.
But empathy is important even for those we may hate.
If I was going to prison I would cry
It’s something that people often forget (because they aren’t like that themselves and have normal human reactions) is that narcisists, sociopaths, psychopaths and people with similar psychological disfunctions that make them act in “cold hearted” ways do feel.
However they feel only for themselves, never for others.
This is a bit unfair, though I didn’t watch the trial in full. We have no idea if she cried for the other lives or not.
It’s unfair of me, but it is my perception and my opinion which is only based in observation yup.
Anyone with a legal background able to help me understand how two deaths resulted in 4 murder convictions and 2 vehicular homicide convictions?
I can say she was convicted of two counts of both R.C. 2903.02(A) & (B)—basically “normal” murder and felony murder. Clearly they thought she did it on purpose and because she was committing another felony. I can’t say why those don’t merge together under Ohio law or if they are supposed to. Ohio is a fairly statutory state, so maybe they overwrite that common law rule?
Okay, felony murder makes sense as the other charges would be felonies. I don’t care much for felony murder laws because I feel like they deincentivize careful action in law enforcement, but I definitely understand where if that law is in place she caught murder for the actual murder then felony murder subsequent to the assaults.
Still feels weird that two dead people produced 6 homicide convictions though. Like, you killed them, that’s 2 crimes. You killed them with a car, that’s two more crimes. In the process of killing them with a car, which is a felony, you killed them. That’s two more crimes.
Not a lawyer but I believe the charges can be sub cats of murder and homicide.
I would have to double check.
How did she survive unscathed, while her 2 passengers both died?
Edit: I found another article, she was not unscathed: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12417047/Mackenzie-Shirilla-TikTok-doing-drugs-not-dying-jailed-murdering-boyfriend-friend-drugged-100mph-crash.html
Often the driver does survive catastrophic accidents vs front passengers.
Thank you, but that’s a lot of reading for a simple question.
Statistical analysis was by χ2 test; a p value of less than 0.05 was assumed to correlate with a significant difference in rates of injury.
Oh yes it’s all clear to me now.
I know it used to be like that before air bags and safety belts, because the steering wheel takes some of the blow in frontal collisions. But such dramatic difference I suspected she might have made the collision worse for the passengers on purpose.
PS She is probably a narcissist: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12417047/Mackenzie-Shirilla-TikTok-doing-drugs-not-dying-jailed-murdering-boyfriend-friend-drugged-100mph-crash.html
PPS: The article I found describes that her survival was miraculous, and she had surgery.
Oh yes it’s all clear to me now.
The p value is effectively the % chance something happened by coincidence, and not because of a real effect. Like flipping a coin and getting the same side several times in a row. P value is an assessment of that likelihood. Less than .05 means a less than 5% chance of that. I don’t know what the other bit is, except it was likely a method of statistical analysis.
It’s a way of saying that the results they found were very unlikely to be due to chance.
Thanks. :)
tl:dr version is always the conclusions …
Conclusions: Front seat passengers are at increased risk of injury relative to drivers in actual road traffic accidents as recorded in the STAG database. This contradicts crash test data, which suggest drivers are less well protected than front seat passengers in laboratory conditions.
Yes but that could for instance be due to traffic coming from the passenger side that the driver is less likely to see in time. That would be irrelevant to this case.
This is an unbelievable tragedy, for all of them. She just turned 18, I wonder what her sentence will be like. I assume that in the US - unlike the situation over here in Europe - there is no special “juvenile justice” for young adults, so she might face multiple lifetimes in prison after being convicted for murder. If I remember correctly you can get separate sentences for each victim, which will sum up to your total sentence.
It’s a tragedy for the victims and their families, but I’m sorry, I can’t feel sorry for her. Seems she planned to harm them for petty reasons because she feels entitled. Probably a narcissist:
In the US, juvenile justice is what trying children as adults is called. As young as 13 you can be tried as an adult in crimes
No, the “juvenile justice” system in the US is… the American juvenile justice system
It has its own judges, facilities, probation offices, and everything.
Gotta keep those prisons stuffed. Glad to see absolutely zero consequences of a for profit system.
There’s remarkably few prisons owned privately
When adult justice is applied, then there’s nothing “juvenile” in that. I guess the thinking behind that (over here) is that you are not yet a fully developed adult when you are 18 and that you might get another chance in life than when committing crimes at older ages.
I believe the point is that there’s a process for deciding whether a juvenile should be charged as a juvenile or as an adult. It means a juvenile who is mature enough to be making cold, calculated decisions (like, “hey, I’m a juvenile, I can get away with more”) can still be tried as an adult.
Confused by the article. Is there a video from inside the car right before the crash?
there was video from CCTV and they also checked onboard computers and saw there were no attempts to slow down before collision
That’ll do it.
I wonder of she cried this much too for the two kids she killed. I think she needs a psychiatric institution instead of jail
If she insane she should and would have. She wasn’t so reality just hit her.
Just read up on her case. She deserves it. Fucking loon. Just die. Bye
There sure are a lot of young women named ‘Mackenzie’.
Lots of fathers, born in the late 70s/early 80s, wanted a lifetime of “The Mac Dad 'ill make ya” jokes.
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I think it is a nice name.
Sounds like a sheep dog from new zealand
Sounds like a girl’s name. I know several girls named that.
