Steve Shirilla, an art and digital media teacher at Mary Queen of Peace School in Cleveland, was placed on administrative leave after the release of Netflix’s crash documentary The Crash, the school said, citing comments he made that surfaced after the film.
The documentary features the first on-camera interview with Mackenzie Shirilla about the July 31, 2022, Strongsville crash that killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan. Court records and reporting show Mackenzie Shirilla was traveling about 100 mph when her vehicle struck a brick wall; she was arrested on Nov. 4, 2022, and in 2023 a Cuyahoga County judge found her guilty of multiple charges, including murder and aggravated vehicular homicide. She was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 15 years served, resulting in two concurrent 15-to-life sentences.
The film also revived police body-cam footage that captured Christine Russo being told by officers that her son Dominic had not survived the crash. In the documentary, Mackenzie Shirilla says she does not remember what happened that day; other recorded lines tied to the case include the statement, "I will crash this car right now," attributed to Shirilla. Her parents, Natalie and Steve Shirilla, have defended her in public comments, saying, "we dispute that evidence and believe it was false."
Mary Queen of Peace School confirmed it placed an employee on administrative leave immediately after learning of allegations shared on social media and said it is investigating "allegations made on social media that one of our teachers has demonstrated poor judgement." The school identified the employee as the art and digital media teacher and said the leave followed the documentary’s release, while the inquiry remains ongoing.
The placement of Steve Shirilla on leave ties a high-profile criminal case and a streaming documentary to a local school community. For parents and colleagues, the documentary’s resurfacing of raw footage and new interviews has reopened wounds and prompted a rapid social media response that the school said it could not ignore. School officials have emphasized they acted swiftly when the allegations appeared online; the investigation is the mechanism the institution is using to determine whether further action is needed.
The tension at the center of the school’s move is between public reaction to the film and the limited public facts about what comments, precisely, prompted the leave. The documentary supplies new testimony and previously unseen footage; Mackenzie Shirilla’s convictions and the grim facts of the crash — a vehicle traveling roughly 100 mph into a brick wall on July 31, 2022, killing two young men — are not in dispute. What remains contested are the claims about evidence made by her parents and the online allegations directed at a school employee because of his relation to the defendant.
For now, the answer to why the school put Steve Shirilla on administrative leave is straightforward: the institution says it acted after allegations tied to the Netflix crash documentary circulated on social media and after it learned of comments the teacher had made, and it has opened an investigation. That inquiry will determine whether the leave becomes a longer suspension, dismissal, or results in his return; until it concludes, the school’s immediate step — administrative leave — stands as the concrete consequence of the film’s renewed attention on a case that courts already resolved last year.
