hey everybody Dr G here I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and Body Language expert and today we're going to be analyzing the case of Mackenzie sharilla Mackenzie shirella was recently sentenced to life in prison for the murder of two men Dominic Russo who was her boyfriend and Davion Flanagan who is a passenger in the car that she ran into the side of a building going 100 miles per hour while she survived the lives of the two passengers were lost before we start today I do want to remind you these are just my opinions this is based
on publicly available information I have not met her I have not formally evaluated her and these are just my thoughts based on what I'm observing I also want to remind you to like And subscribe if you want to see more content just like this alright let's go so what we're really doing today is we're going to be looking at some body language there's limited footage available but we'll see what we've got and then we're going to talk about the psychology of somebody who could do this somebody who would try to take not only their own
life but the life of the passenger and the life of her boyfriend and be willing to do that so we're going to talk about her psychology some after this but first let's take a look at some videos from the various hearings and the sentencing so what we're watching is the hearing where she pleads not guilty basically she's sitting in juvenile detention right now this is a zoom call so she's being zoomed in but just let's get a little bit of an idea of what her body language is typically like 679-612 Juvenile Detention couch McDonald 216.
one thing that's pretty obvious is that she looks remarkably relaxed she's sitting with her head in her hands she's been playing with her hair kind of straightening it out this is something that I'm not saying she's not taking it seriously but it she looks awfully calm she doesn't seem to have the level of tension that you might expect for a situation like this I'm gonna go back we'll watch this again and then we'll keep going yourself your friends your family members may not have any contact with the alleged victims families member do you understand that
yes all right there tends to be a certain level of tension that you see when people are in these kinds of situations a certain level of fear and concern she doesn't really seem to demonstrate that she seems to try to be demonstrating a look of casualness we'll go back and watch this again because it really is limited footage that we have of her yes yes all right all right uh we'll know Mr McDonald has been retained case goes to the doctor Nancy margarusso uh judge Russo's staff will sit down now her eyes got really big
there and I'm not sure why that is I don't know if it's because the judge's last name is the same as her boyfriend's name I I don't know what that reaction was but watch this right here Russo judge Russo's but that's a look of surprise that's a genuine look of surprise it's not very clear why she looks so surprised though so this is another hearing so we're getting some live footage of what she's liking these hearings [Music] thank your honor at this time uh the state has provided and one of the things once again that
sort of stands out about her she just seems remarkably casual about these things she may not be internally maybe maybe she's just doesn't express it but it's interesting to see how calm she seems during all of this is true thank your honor at this time the state has the kids are you satisfied with your lawyer so far you can see us here yes sir all right anything that we have to discuss this trials coming up soon any issues any Discovery Chronicles anything we need to talk about from my position and so one of the things
that's a little bit difficult with her it almost looks like she has a slight smirk on her face so that she might be smiling this might just be the way that her face looks because sometimes we see that sometimes we see people that we're like why are they looking so amused by all of this and so maybe she isn't smiling but it does seem a little bit like that she once again does she she's saying yes your honor she's reacting appropriately so I'm not being critical in that sense but she just doesn't seem to have
the level of gravity affecting her that you would think in a situation like this that is as serious as all of this is which may have been what got her in this situation in the first place but we're going to talk about that after we watch the body language when we talk more about the psychology of the situation now we're going to watch the verdicts being read and after that we're going to talk about the psychology behind how something like this can happen I appreciate that despite that stress you all worked with so now as
she's being talked to by the judge as she's preparing for her sentence to be read you can see the stress on her face a lot more than we did before this is a little bit more of what we would have expected early on in the process because oftentimes people are very very stressed out by being in court oftentimes they take it very seriously not saying that she wasn't but she certainly has a very different look and appearance now she chose a course of death and destruction that day 802 crystallizes the deadly decision making of the
defendant she morphs from a responsible driver to literal Hell on Wheels that she makes her way down the street McKenzie alone made the decision to drive the car to drive an obscure route so oftentimes when we see people cover their mouths oftentimes that's a shock reaction obviously sometimes it's when people don't want to say something that wouldn't really make sense in this context so I think that what that says is she may be shocked that this is the result she may truly have not understood or not expected this result to happen she may have thought
that this was not going to go this way that may have been why she appeared so calm previously methodical Deliverance intentional and purposeful this was not reckless driving this was murder four renders the following verdicts count one the court having had count one tried to a pursuant to waiver finds a defendant Mackenzie shirella guilty of murder to win Dominique Russo it's interesting even then despite the fact that the judge was very clearly laying out what was going to happen she still seemed further shocked she still seems to be somewhat in denial up into the very
moment that it's told to her watch her reaction right here the court having guilty of murder to win so you see her eyes got bigger and we do that when we're surprised or when we're shocked in violation I wish we had more footage to analyze so we could see more of what she was like as evidence was being presented but it really isn't available so I thought we would just look at a little bit of body language to get some idea of what she was like so then we can talk some about the psychology of
this situation because the psychology of this situation is complicated and I think that part of what brings people's attention to this situation is it's so strange the idea that someone would drive 100 miles an hour into a wall that seems to have their whole life ahead of them why would they do something like this so let's talk about what would cause somebody to act in this way I want to caution you it's very possible that these ideas don't apply to Mackenzie sharilla I'm talking more generally about anybody who would engage in this anybody would take
a car with their boyfriend and another friend in the back seat and run it into a wall at 100 miles an hour might be dealing with the various issues we're going to discuss I can't guarantee or I can't say whether or not they would be applicable to her so let's Jump Right In into why somebody would do this so it's been reported that her and Dominic Russo had a conflicted relationship that it was volatile at times for people that have conflicted or obsessive or challenging relationships like this it's possible that she conflated Love and Death
in other words that she had a hard time separating it she may have seen death as a unifying act as a romantic act and this can blur the lines between consequences and tensions and even the act itself there's always got to be mental health considerations is this somebody that's dealing with something like borderline personality disorder I'm not speculating that she has it I have no reason to believe she has that specifically but that's the kind of diagnosis people oftentimes go to when people engage in acts like this is there depression is there something else going
on that added to the likelihood that something like this could happen that wouldn't excuse it but at least it would help us make sense of it at one point the prosecutor described devian Flanagan as Cargo in other words that she didn't see him as a person she saw him as an object and this is something I describe in other situations with other people in other words when people have certain dysfunctional types of personalities they then see people as objects and they can treat them as such so it doesn't matter that he's a living breathing person
to her he's a means to an end she has her boyfriend in the car she has a mission that she wants to accomplish and the person in the back seat was not a person to her potentially not saying that's necessarily true but that's oftentimes how people they can engage in these kinds of behaviors see others they're a means to an end as the driver of the car I would be surprised if she expected to survive and so you have to wonder if that was a way to avoid consequences or shame or guilt about engaging in
that act narcissism always has to be considered when someone's willing to put their own needs that far above those of anyone else you have to consider this could be an extreme form of narcissism or something else another type of Personality issue so we have to look at the intersection of impulsivity and premeditation so people that engage in impulsive acts oftentimes get themselves in trouble because they act without thinking that's really what impulsivity is premeditation is planning beforehand if someone is premeditated because they know they're thinking about hurting somebody right but they don't know if they
would actually go through with it when they think about it they talk about it they even say the way that they would do it people make a lot of threats people say a lot of things but they don't always act on them she made that threat and it may have been impulsive that she acted on it I think there's some suggestion of that considering there was a third person in the car that it shows an absolute callous disregard for his life her disregard for life in general is startling but the idea that she engaged in
this with a third person in the car shows some degree of impulsivity as well so a combination of premeditation and impulsivity can be very very dangerous it's also going to be considered the way that it happened in other words running a car into a wall is a violent act it is not passive in any way and so that speaks a lot to the psychology of somebody who engages in this act that is rageful that is hateful that is angry particularly with a third person in the car it'd be bad enough if it was just her
boyfriend but bringing another friend along with this that is absolute and utter rage and so that's one of the things that you have to try to figure out with this because when she presents in court she doesn't present his rageful in course she presents his flippant but having the way that they've described their relationship the volatility in the relationship the conflict in the relationship there certainly seems to be a lot of anger there but what's really tragic is that apparently she had made these threats before she is saying out in the open I would do
this and somehow it wasn't taken seriously enough for anything to happen I'm not blaming anybody for not stopping it it certainly is nobody's fault but hers for doing this but I do think it highlights the fact that we really really need to take it seriously when anybody makes these kinds of threats even if you don't think of it serious even if they seem like the kind of person who would never do it because I would be shocked if anybody thought she would actually go through with something like this but it doesn't change the fact that
if people are going to say these kinds of things if people are going to make these kinds of threats we have to take them very very seriously before we wrap up I do want to say I hope if there's anybody that has any thoughts about this or if there's anything anybody wants to add please let me know below this is a really tragic and bizarre case I also wanted to remind you to like And subscribe if you want to see more content just like this alright thanks for watching
