STRONGSVILLE, Ohio – The spot where “Hell on Wheels” driver Mackenzie Shirilla smashed into a building at 100 mph, killing her boyfriend and a close pal, has been repaired and manicured in the years since the headline-grabbing crash.
A large oak tree now stands in the spot where Shirilla blasted through a stop sign and crashed her 2018 black Toyota Camry into a building at 5:30 a.m. on July 31, 2022, after a sleepover at another friend’s house.
Stern “No Trespassing” signs, which warn lookie-lou fans of the hit Netflix doc about the case, “The Crash,” provide the only hint of what happened there.
The Post retraced the doomed 6-minute, 4.2-mile route she took before plowing her car into a brick wall – including the final stretch, where she floored the gas and never let up.
Cops found her fuzzy Prada slipper still on the gas pedal when they rescued her from the wreck.
But the roads are far from deadly for anyone driving a sane speed — and even lovely for gloomy northeast Ohio.
Shirilla, then 17, took the fateful drive with ex-boyfriend Dominic Russo and friend Davion Flanagan after spending the night at a friend’s house on Brushwood Lane in Strongsville — about 20 miles southwest of Cleveland.
After leaving the quiet, dead-end road before sunrise, the trio traveled west past just a handful of modest homes before turning left onto Whitney Road.
Shirilla’s sedan followed the narrow, straight, two-lane road for nearly two miles – passing tree-lined neighborhoods, a lone stop sign and a single traffic light – before reaching an intersection surrounded by fast-food joints and gas stations, where she made another left turn.
The vehicle continued south on Pearl Road for roughly 1.3 miles, with stretches of dense greenery broken up only occasionally by office complexes and other commercial properties.
Surveillance footage then captured the Camry “making a controlled [right-hand] turn…onto westbound Progress Drive,” a Strongsville detective later testified, according to court documents.
That’s when Shirilla put the pedal to the metal, cops say.
The car rocketed to 100 mph. Despite the uneven concrete roadway and a pair of curves – one bending slightly left, followed by one veering right – Shirilla somehow maintained control.
Once through the bends, the vehicle was only yards away from the T-shaped intersection of Progress and Alameda drives.
But Shirilla never hit the brakes.
Instead, the Camry launched through a stop sign and barreled into the sprawling brick headquarters of a local business, The Pipe Line Development Company, or PLIDCO.
Rather than striking the building head-on, the car veered slightly right, and slammed passenger-side first into a smaller building that juts out from the main structure.
Russo, 20, and Flanagan, 19, died at the scene.
Shirilla – who was found crumpled inside the wreckage – was airlifted to a hospitaland treated for injuries to her arm and leg.
Nearly four years later, little remains to suggest that one of Ohio’s most notorious car crashes unfolded there.
The grounds are immaculately groomed.
A section of darker red brick appears to mark where repairs were made to the impacted portion of the building.
Several boulders, additional trees and the company’s pristine new sign also adorn the lawn.
Evidence recovered from the destroyed Toyota’s Event Data Recorder, or “black box,” showed Shirilla never applied the service brake before impact.
Shirilla, who only had THC in her system at the time of the wreck, was sentenced to two concurrent termsof 15 years to life in prison, after a judge found her guilty of double murder during a dramatic bench trial in 2023.
She is appealing her conviction for a second time, with her lawyers arguing recently that the killer may have “suffered from a pre-existing medical condition that could have caused her to black out while driving.”
The post Retracing Mackenzie Shirilla’s ‘Hell on Wheels’ drive — and the tiny clue about what really happened at crash site appeared first on New York Post.
