A friend of Mackenzie Shirilla told her during a jail phone call that her slain boyfriend, Dominic Russo, was her “guardian angel.”

Shirilla, now 21, was convicted of murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, and several other offenses in connection with the July 2022 car crash in Strongsville, Ohio, that killed 20-year-old Russo and their friend, 19-year-old Davion Flanagan, while Shirilla, then 17, was behind the wheel.

According to the undated call obtained by PEOPLE, the conversation took place while Shirilla was being held at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center. The call began with Shirilla speaking to her mother, Natalie Shirilla, who then passed the phone to several of Mackenzie’s friends.

“Hey girl, it’s me,” one friend told Mackenzie. “I miss you so much. Life has been boring without you. I can’t wait to talk to you and show you our place, what’s going on, and how much Dom [Russo] loves you.”

The friend continued, referring to Russo: “He is your guardian angel, and we want you to know that we have your back too throughout this whole experience. Know that we don’t love you any less. And think about you every day.”

Two other friends on the call shared similar messages of support.

“I think about you every day, and I know you have so many amazing memories with them,” another friend said.

A different friend added, “Dom is out there watching you and most likely mad at all these people that are doing this to you.”

Later in the conversation, Mackenzie told her friends she desperately wanted to go home and discussed ways they could stay in touch with her in the future.

Prosecutors said Mackenzie intentionally drove her Toyota Camry into a brick wall at roughly 100 mph in what they described as a failed murder-suicide attempt stemming from her troubled relationship with Russo, while Flanagan was in the back seat. They were all on their way home from a party.

Prosecutors built their case on car data showing the accelerator was floored and the brakes were never applied in the five seconds before impact, along with text messages, videos, and a prior alleged threat Mackenzie made to Russo to crash her car with Russo inside weeks before the fatal incident.

Mackenzie’s defense claimed she suffered from postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a condition that can cause dizziness and fainting, and had blacked out during the crash, leaving her with no memory of the collision.

She has maintained that the crash was not intentional, including in an interview from behind bars featured in the recent Netflix documentary The Crash.

Since the documentary’s May 15 release, PEOPLE has obtained recordings of several calls Mackenzie made from jail before her August 2023 transfer to the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville—including one where she called herself the “third victim,” and another saying she doesn’t “need to be rehabilitated.”

She is currently serving two concurrent 15-year-to-life sentences and will be eligible for parole in 2037 at the age of 33.

Read the original article on People