STRONGSVILLE, Ohio (WOIO) – After 19-year-old Davion Flanagan had a football career-ending injury during his last year of high school, he decided to continue to pursue his dream of being a barber.
It was something he had already been doing for years — cutting hair for his teammates, even his coaches!
He had finally applied to Allstate Hairstyling & Barber College, when his life tragically ended.
CLEVELAND: It’s another Christmas season without their oldest brother for the Flanagan’s… 💔
…but this year they’re starting a new tradition.
A scholarship in his honor! 🙏
Story @cleveland19news 4/6 pic.twitter.com/C626lb1hEp
Mackenzie Shirilla, then 17, had been driving with her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his friend Davion Flanagan in 2022, when she intentionally crashed the vehicle into a building in Strongsville.
In 2023, the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Margaret Russo found Shirilla guilty of the following crimes:
Shirilla was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
“It’s heartbreaking that we lost him so early, and the way that we did,” Adoptive mother Jaime Flanagan said. “But doing this, and doing it as a family to help carry on his dream and help others…it helps there to be some warmth and some hope in the midst of all that grief.”
Keeping Davion’s dreams in the forefront, the Flanagan family created the “Davion Flanagan Memorial Scholarship,” which is given to students attending the Allstate Hairstyling & Barber College.
“He got the application, but his life was taken from him before he got a chance to pursue that dream,” adoptive father Scott Flanagan said.
The first recipient of the award was Melissa Aviles.
“He would have been amazing,” Aviles said. “I probably would have been under him in barber school.”
But what tied together Aviles and Davion wasn’t just the scholarship.
“We were both in foster care. It really hit because when he got adopted around 8, I got put in foster care around 8,” Aviles said. “So we had the same journey, just in different time frames.”
The family has not released a specific date for the next round of scholarship applications, but they’re hoping to release them around the fall 2025 semester.
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