Flynn Mackrell car crash: Parents of the accident victim urge that the mother of the teenage driver be held accountable

The parents of a teenage passenger killed in a high-speed car crash in Michigan are urging authorities to file charges against the driver's mother.

In November 2023, Flynn MacKrell was riding with his then-16-year-old friend in a car that police said was traveling at over 100 miles per hour in a residential zone where the speed limit was 25 miles per hour. The 16-year-old lost control and crashed into a tree, killing 18-year-old MacKrell, police said.

According to his obituary, MacKrell died two months into his freshman year at the University of Dayton.

The teen driver was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty. He is awaiting trial. A lawyer for the family declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

But MacKrell's family is demanding that the driver's mother be held accountable, saying the mother knew her son had a habit of driving excessively fast.

“He had no regard for the safety of his passengers, no regard for the safety of pedestrians. And the mother knew that,” MacKrell's father, Thad MacKrell, told ABC News.

The 16-year-old's phone had Life360 installed, an app that shows how fast a car is going and where it is, according to an investigative report obtained by ABC News.

The driver's mother had repeatedly sent him text messages in the weeks and months before the crash, urging him not to speed. At one point she wrote, “I have screenshots of you … driving 123 miles per hour,” the report said.

“Any reasonable person would have done something very, very simple – they would have taken the keys away from her. But she didn't do it. And our son is dead,” said Thad MacKrell.

“Every day we wake up in shock and disbelief because our beloved Flynn is no longer here,” said MacKrell's mother, Anne Vanker. “And it was 100% preventable.”

The MacKrell family points to the Oxford, Michigan, school shooter case, in which the teenage gunman's parents were held criminally liable for giving their son the gun he used in the 2021 shooting that killed four people. In April of this year, the shooter's parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after both were found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials.

ABC News legal expert Brian Buckmire said: “In the Crumbley case, we are talking about a firearm, which is inherently a dangerous weapon. One of its purposes is to injure or kill others. A vehicle or car is not necessarily inherently a dangerous weapon.”

“It becomes a dangerous weapon when used recklessly or negligently,” he continued. “So the way we look at those two objects may lead to a different opinion on how this case is pursued.”

The district attorney's office said it is reviewing MacKrell's case. Investigators have requested an “arrest warrant” for a relative of the teen driver, prosecutors told ABC News.

The driver's case is “classified as an adult,” according to the Wayne County District Attorney's Office. If convicted, “classification as an adult allows the judge the option to sentence the defendant as a juvenile or as an adult, or to impose a combined juvenile sentence with the option to impose an adult sentence if the juvenile is not rehabilitated,” the prosecutor's office said.