“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” the judge said before she read out Mackenzie Shirilla's verdict Monday afternoon.

“This was not reckless driving. This was murder,” the judge said before she read out Mackenzie Shirilla’s verdict Monday afternoon.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    310·
    1 year ago

    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.

          • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
            7·
            1 year ago

            You can’t consent to murder, the best you could do is indemnify someone/an organisation against accidental death.

            • CaptainEffort@sh.itjust.works
              4·
              1 year ago

              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?

          • Fuck_u_spez_@lemmy.world
            7·
            1 year ago

            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.

      • JoBo@feddit.uk
        38·
        1 year ago

        It sounds much more like an abusive relationship. She was trying to punish him, regardless of the risk to herself.

          • JoBo@feddit.uk
            23·
            1 year ago

            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.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        1 year ago

        This is why suicidal people are dangerous, it’s a relatively small change from killing yourself, to killing others.

        • zaph@sh.itjust.works
          24·
          1 year ago

          This is why pastry chefs are dangerous, it’s a relatively small change from baking your bread, to baking others.

          • Yepthatsme@kbin.social
            7·
            1 year ago

            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.

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            1 year ago

            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.

            https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277022/

            • Chaotic Entropy@feddit.uk
              15·
              1 year ago

              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)

        • quicksand@lemm.ee
          9·
          1 year ago

          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

          • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            1 year ago

            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.

            • RedAggroBest@lemmy.world
              3·
              1 year ago

              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.

      • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
        18·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • JoBo@feddit.uk
        14·
        1 year ago

        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.”