Mackenzie Shirilla’s dad put on administrative leave from school after participating in Netflix doc “The Crash”

Key Points

• Mackenzie Shirilla’s father Steve has been placed on administrative leave following comments he made in the Netflix documentary The Crash.

• The Mary Queen of Peace School is “investigating allegations made on social media” that one of their teachers “demonstrated poor judgement.”

• The Crash is available to stream on Netflix.

Mackenzie Shirilla‘s father has been placed on administrative leave following comments he made in the Netflix documentary The Crash.

Steve Shirilla, who works as an Art/Digital Media teacher at the Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland, had been placed on leave after he “demonstrated poor judgement,” according to a statement shared with Entertainment Weekly.

“Administrators at Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland are investigating allegations made on social media that one of its teachers has demonstrated poor judgement. Upon learning of the allegation, the school acted immediately and placed the teacher on administrative leave. The investigation is ongoing,” the statement reads.

“The health and wellbeing of its students are among the highest priorities for Mary Queen of Peace School, and its leadership team takes all allegations of poor judgment very seriously,” the statement concludes.

Steve told local outlet 19News that he was placed on administrative leave and was “upset” with how the documentary was edited.

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Steve’s daughter Mackenzie is the subject of the Netflix documentary The Crash. The documentary details the fatal car crash that killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan, after Mackenzie drove her 2018 Toyota Camry into a brick building at 100 miles per hour in Strongsville, Ohio.

Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene. Mackenzie was found unconscious and breathing. As authorities investigated the crash, there was speculation that she had intentionally accelerated, and the accident’s investigation turned into a murder case. Mackenzie allegedly had THC in her system at the time of the crash that exceeded the legal limit in Ohio, per Cleveland.com.

In the documentary, Steve appears to defend Mackenzie’s use of cannabis and believes that his daughter is innocent.

“I don’t have a problem with her smoking dope,” he says in The Crash. “If you’re going to smoke a drug, that’s the one I believe you should take.”

She was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated murder in November 2022. Despite being 17 when the accident occurred, Mackenzie was tried as an adult.

In August 2023, Mackenzie was ultimately found guilty by a Cuyahoga County judge, Nancy Russo (no relation to Dominic), of all 12 charges, including murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, felonious assault, and drug possession for the crash that killed Russo and Flanagan. She received two concurrent life sentences.

At the sentencing, Judge Russo said Mackenzie “chose a course of death and destruction that day.” Her first parole hearing is scheduled for 2037.

The Crash is available to stream on Netflix.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly