I finally watched the Netflix documentary, The Crash, and thought we would take a look at a couple charts.
We will focus on Mackenzie and her parents.
We inherit more from our parents than eye color and table manners. Astrologers who work with family charts consistently find the same degrees clustered across generations. A mother's Moon sitting exactly on a daughter's Mercury, a father's Jupiter conjunct a child's wound point, the same nodal axis running unresolved from parent to child like an unanswered question passed down the line.
It's as if the family were a single organism whose wounds and gifts and unmet evolutionary assignments redistribute themselves among its members, looking for the one who will finally do something with them
(and I have seen this over and over again in families brought together through childbirth/IVF and through adoption and step-parenting).
Sometimes this redistribution is a GIFT.
Sometimes it's a CURSE.
And sometimes, rarely, as catastrophically as this one, it is a car accelerating toward a wall at 100 miles per hour, carrying a story that began long before the driver was even born (as all our stories do).
THE BACKGROUND - in the early morning hours of July 31, 2022, Ohio police responded to a 911 call reporting that a vehicle had crashed into a commercial building. At the scene, officers found a heavily damaged Toyota Camry with three unconscious occupants trapped inside. The driver, 17-year-old Mackenzie Shirilla, survived and was airlifted to a hospital. Her boyfriend, 20-year-old Dominic Russo, and their friend, 19-year-old Davion Flanagan, died at the scene. Investigators later reviewed the vehicle's event data recorder, surveillance footage, phone msgs, interviews and physical evidence. They concluded that Shirilla had intended to kill herself and the other occupants and had accelerated to full throttle and never applied the brakes before impact. Three months later, she was arrested and charged in connection with the deaths of Russo and Flanagan. On August 14, 2023, following a bench trial, the judge found Shirilla guilty, stating, "This was not reckless driving. This was murder." She was sentenced to multiple concurrent 15 years-to-life prison sentences, convictions later upheld on appeal. Shirilla has said that she has no memory of the crash and that it was not intentional. Later the claim of a medical issue was given. The story and her claims were revisited in the Netflix documentary The Crash, released in May 2026, which brought renewed national attention to the case.
The parents featured in the documentary came across so clearly as 'enablers' that I wondered what the charts would show/where the problems were here - and as always, the astrology is quite amazing.
Let's unpack it.
The Crash happened in late July 2022. Collectively we had transiting Uranus, Mars and the North Node of Fate (sudden actions and erratic behavior with extreme consequences for the future - the attempt to change reality instantly) traveling together in Taurus (conjunct Algol - losing our head). There is a collective connection with the story - there is something that each of us and all of us can learn ...
I don't have anyone's birth times, so am using solar charts (pulling the Sun to the ascendent, which is also very accurate, so we will look at houses).
I should add that analyzing the astrology is not about 'making excuses' for someone's behavior. The planets don't 'make' us do things. We have free will/choices. I do believe though that we come in with a contract to face certain karmas. I don't think we 'chose' our parents/situations, so much as we magnetically lined up with them - based on our past lives/karmas and our next steps, which are (symbolically speaking) our ancestors' and parents' next steps, too.
Although Mackenzie's central story is probably that Saturn in Cancer opposing Chiron in Cappy and her Moon/Uranus in Pisces, we will still start with her Sun.
Because her Leo Sun plays a part, too.
When Mackenzie was born the Sun in Leo was squaring the Nodes of Fate, so she has a fixed T-Square involving her Sun in Leo, her North Node in Taurus and her South Node in Scorpio. In Evolutionary Astrology her Sun itself would be called a 'skipped step' and she would be seen as a soul at a crossroads. Every year near her birthday (the crash happened with the Sun at 7 Leo and her natal Sun is 10 Leo, so a couple days before her birthday), as the Sun closes in on her natal Sun degree this T-Square is activated (it's not the only time it is activated, but it is annually spotlighted here).
This annual 'spotlighting' is true for all of us. The days near our birthday are the time when our ego, identity and sense of self are most VISIBLE and can feel most raw and exposed. Threats to the 'self' hit harder than usual, especially for a Leo Sun which is sign that rules dramatic public assertion of the self anyway and unlike the other signs, a Leo Sun has final dispositorship/only ever answers to itself.
Her solar return is probably also one of the reasons she lives through the crash. Her life force is at its annual peak/her body has maximum resources available to it.
At the time of the CRASH, the Sun is conjunct her natal Sun and also squaring her Nodes of Fate, so now she has both her natal Sun and the transiting Sun squaring her Nodes of Fate. In traditional astrology this marks a critical decision point - a "karmic crossroads" where the soul is forced to choose a direction.
This is one of the most potent timing signatures for a life-altering CRISIS.
Remember she is born with this T-Square to the Nodes - into a life that structurally demands a choice between evolution and regression. The North Node in Taurus (evolution) calls her toward stability, embodied self-worth, groundedness and the building of something solid and lasting. The South Node in Scorpio (regression) pulls her back toward obsession, possession, the merging of love and destruction, the compulsion to annihilate what cannot be controlled.
Situations conspire for her to be made to CHOOSE.
Her Sun also opposes her natal Neptune - this blurs the boundary between herself and others, and her identity can become entangled with projection, idealization and fantasy. She could move between identities and define herself through relationships. All the time, but at her solar return this would also be more strongly in play.
Because the Sun in our chart is one of two stand-ins for the FATHER, let's pull in his chart for this part. We see her father has an exact Sun/Neptune square (a kind of prequel to his daughter's Sun/Neptune opposition). So, again, confusion around identity and porous boundaries. Her father also has a North Node in Taurus (so the same nodal line-up as his daughter) and South Node in Scorpio. Mackenzie's Sun is tightly conjunct her father's IC (again using the solar chart). Her solar story coming through his roots - quite literal. The father has the 1960's Pluto/Uranus (death, transformation, chaos, trauma, technology) conjunction in his 5th house of children. He has a stellium in Pisces (mostly 11th house in his solar chart) including a 23-degree Chiron that exactly opposes his natal Uranus. So chaotic children creating a public/collective wound for him AND his very old wounding within the group/collective creating chaos for his children or creating chaotic children. His Chiron is conjunct Saturn, so he has his own wound with father/authority/fatherhood and again this stuff is drifting through Pisces and downstream to his offspring ...
Another 'father' archetype in Mackenzie's chart is her Saturn.
She has Saturn in Cancer. Saturn in Cancer can be the parent/authority/father who loves instead of limits. Saturn is in his detriment in Cancer because Cancer's essential nature ie nurturing, protective, emotionally attuned, unable to bear the distress of those it loves works directly against everything Saturn is supposed to do. Saturn's job is to enforce consequences, hold firm, say no, and allow the person to experience the discomfort of their own choices. In Cancer, that function keeps getting overridden by the impulse to soothe, protect and make the pain stop. And the dad archetype here (Saturn) is answering to the mom archetype (the Moon/Cancer) - and the Moon here (floating through Pisces conjunct erratic Uranus) is not up to the task! Pisces dissolves. Uranus disrupts. The combination produces an early environment where the emotional ground shifts without warning and where the rules about what is acceptable or how love is expressed change unpredictably.
Let's pull her mom's chart in here.
Mackenzie's chaotic Moon/Uranus in tightly conjunct (Uranus exact) her mother's Jupiter. Jupiter expands/makes things bigger. The Jupiter in Pisces in the mom's chart is also showing her husband. Larger than life/creative, generous/compassionate, but also not solid, drifting, escapist. Mackenzie's Venus is conjunct her mother's Saturn in dualistic Gemini, so her father (mother's father) maybe with some kind of double life and then something about this pulled into the mother and then the daughter's Venus. How she loves/what she loves. The masculine and feminine merged. Then the mother's Moon in Cancer conjunct the daughter's Saturn. Again, the same pattern (and whenever we see a pattern repeating in a chart, we know the energies will be in play).
Cancer wants to protect. Saturn wants to prevent catastrophe. Combined, nurturing can become something like - "I love you so much I can't let you experience pain." That sounds loving. But it is also selfish - I cannot tolerate watching you fail, so we will kind of just pretend that you haven't! Consequences disappear. The mother rescues. Explains. Softens. Negotiates. Both parents same pattern. And if the mother who is so dominant here cannot hold that line because she is anxious, guilty, frightened or overidentified with the child, Saturn never develops internally. The child continues looking outside themselves for limits. And then the Moon/Uranus amplifies all of this. Moon/Uranus is electrically emotional. Feelings come in surges. Mackenzie could probably go from calm to overwhelmed almost instantaneously. A child like that needs more containment than average - not because they're "bad," but because their nervous system is more reactive. If instead, the parents begin organizing themselves around preventing emotional explosions ... everyone starts walking on eggshells, etc. The household slowly orbits the child's emotional weather. That is not conscious manipulation by the child - although as she grows it will be - it starts as a family adaptation. She adapted to the chaos story she was born into and now she is the chaos and they adapt to her.
Every time a consequence approached Mackenzie - from drugs, bullying, escalating behavior - the parental response was to step in front of it. To explain it away. To reframe it as something other than what it was. Not out of malice probably, but out of the exact mechanisms we have talked about here.
There is a HUGE LESSON available to the collective with this case. Not very many people will do what Mackenzie did here, but many people are walking around without Saturns because of wounded parents without backbones/structure.
Mackenzie has Chiron in Capricorn opposing Saturn - the wound is the missing structure. Chiron in Capricorn is one of the most specifically described wound signatures in the chart and it is EXACT on "time runs out" the Sun/Saturn/Pluto/Ceres/Mercury/Jupiter conjunction of 2020 (22 Cappy so a 'kill or be killed' style wound), so Mackenzie's Chiron (wound) tied strongly into collective storylines and must have been amplified big time back in 2020. The hurt is located right in the area of limits, authority, discipline and the internalization of rules. Capricorn is Saturn's own sign, so Chiron sitting there says the wound lives in the very place where Saturn should have built something solid BUT DIDN'T.
The Leo Sun adds to the problem because a Leo Sun's healthy expression requires some resistance to develop properly - her ego needs to encounter limits in order to learn where she ends and the world begins. Without that friction, Leo doesn't develop resilience and warmth. It develops the shadow of entitlement, the inability to tolerate rejection, the sense that the self's desires override everything else.
On the night of the CRASH, the transiting Moon was moving over her natal Mercury in Virgo, while opposing her natal Moon/Uranus in Pisces. This is the most immediate emotional signature. Mercury rules our thinking, communication and crucially here it rules cars and short journeys. The Moon flooding this point means emotions overwhelm rational thought and pour directly into the vehicle/travel domain. She isn't thinking her way through the night. She's feeling through it, and the car becomes the instrument of that feeling. And we know with her Moon conjunct Uranus in Pisces, her emotional nature is already wired for sudden, unpredictable releases. To say "she can just go off" is not an exaggeration. The transiting Moon opposing this natal Moon/Uranus conjunction is essentially a trigger and the usual Uranian volatility of her moon gets AMPLIFIED. She has transiting Venus applying to her Saturn (love hitting a limit/boundary/ending), transiting Saturn retrograding in opposition to her Mars - something tells me she has done this before in some way or thought about it and that something in her ancestry carries a story like this, too (split second decision with devastating consequences), and then Mercury applying to her Mars. Everything is AWAKE.
Then she has her Solar Return (as the transiting Sun conjunct her birth Sun activated her natal Sun square Nodal T-Square) presenting two potential paths forward to Mackenzie when she felt her boyfriend pulling away - 1. Taurus North Node - endure the loss, feel the pain, accept reality, rebuild a life, discover self-worth apart from the relationship or 2. Scorpio South Node - refuse the loss, attempt to control the outcome, merge love with destruction, make the ending absolute.
It wouldn't have taken much this night for things to go very wrong. The one sort-of stability in her chart is her Uranus/Neptune mutual reception 7th and 8th houses - and even that is a quincunx - so she has relational intensity, it might have been something that felt like a threat to that/her feeling on the outside of a space where she normally felt 'inside' and then the collective Mars/Uranus/North Node energy - everything worked together in a PERFECT STORM.
Bottom line - she shouldn't have been driving a car/had a car to drive AT ALL.
Bottom line also since we are looking at ancestral astrology - children are not blank slates. Every child arrives with a particular temperament and set of developmental challenges. A Moon/Uranus child is not "created" by her parents (although, yes, she lines up with their situation when she is born and their tendencies/energies they haven't worked with). The chart suggests a nervous system that's unusually reactive, independent, sensitive to unpredictability or emotionally unconventional. Such children can be awesome, original, funny and intuitive. They can also be freaking exhausting to raise. The task for parents is to provide predictability without rigidity.
Imagine that child in a family where the parents themselves have unresolved themes around boundaries, accountability and idealization. The family starts to organize itself around the child's volatility - they avoid conflict in order to prevent meltdowns, they accommodate rather than confront, they become hypervigilant and overinvolved in the child's life. They interpret distress as something they need to eliminate. From their' perspective, this may feel loving. For the child though - something important is lost. She has no walls to push against/to stop her. We all need resistance to build muscles. If there are no consistent walls, then the child never quite learns where they end and other people begin - her Sun/Neptune opposition!
A soul with a Saturn in Cancer and a Moon/Uranus developmental contract will likely be drawn into a family where questions of emotional regulation, freedom and containment are already active. The daughter, the mother and the father are all participants in the same unfolding pattern without removing anyone's agency. Inherited patterns are not the same as inherited outcomes. Our chart describes the baton that is handed to us - our lives/what we make of them, reveal how we learn to carry it. She is responsible for what she does. That said, she was a minor and obviously temperamentally unsuited to be driving a car at all. There were undoubtedly multiple warnings. Spaces in time where this whole thing could have been prevented and two innocent lives would have been spared.
Bullying is Leo shadow. The inability to accept a breakup/ending (or even feeling on the outside of a space that we once held an inside seat) is Leo shadow fused with Scorpio South Node. The act of crashing the car is what happens when a Leo ego that was never taught it could survive loss - because it was never allowed to experience loss - encounters rejection it cannot charm or manipulate its way out of. The South Node pulled, and the Saturn brake had never been installed.
Her never hitting the brakes is incredible astrological symbolism that she didn't have any.
Time will tell what she learns from this. Life (and the courts) has given her the walls her family structure didn't ... she is crazy fortunate to have the gift/second chance of prison. It's something her victims didn't get ...
xo all
please excuse typos/nonsense no time to re-read :)
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