Nancy Iskander was in the crosswalk of a quiet Westlake Village street with three of her children when she heard engines roaring. Two sport utility vehicles were barreling toward them.
Iskander put up her right hand in a desperate effort to stop the speeding vehicles and dove for safety, grabbing her 5-year-old son. Her next memory is of her two older boys — Jacob, 8, and Mark, 11 — crumpled on Triunfo Canyon Road.
Los Angeles County prosecutors say Rebecca Grossman was behind the wheel of a white Mercedes that fatally struck the boys in the marked crosswalk. Witnesses say she was driving as fast as 81 mph and traveled another half-mile after slamming into the children.
More than three years after the brothers’ deaths, the murder trial of the Hidden Hills socialite has begun, with jury selection Tuesday in a Van Nuys courtroom.
Grossman, 60, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death in connection with the fatal Sept. 29, 2020, collision. The murder counts are somewhat unprecedented as Grossman was not charged with driving under the influence, which is typically used to prove gross negligence in vehicular fatalities.
She has pleaded not guilty, and her legal team, led by Tony Buzbee, says the evidence will show she wasn’t speeding and another vehicle struck the boys.
A sign outside the Van Nuys Courthouse in 2022 shows an image of Mark Iskander, 11, and his brother Jacob, 8.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Grossman was driving behind Scott Erickson, a former Dodgers player, who earlier in the day had been drinking cocktails with Grossman at a nearby restaurant, sheriff’s investigators testified during a preliminary hearing in 2022.
Grossman’s on-site breathalyzer test showed a blood alcohol content of 0.076%, slightly below California’s legal limit of 0.08%. A blood sample taken three hours after the crash registered at the 0.08% mark.
Prosecutors Ryan Gould and Jamie Castro plan to introduce evidence that Valium was also found in Grossman’s system, and that together with the alcohol, the prescription drug impaired her driving.
Jurors will be allowed to hear that Grossman — who is married to Dr. Peter Grossman, a renowned plastic surgeon who heads the West Hills-based Grossman Burn Center — was in a romantic relationship with Erickson at the time of the crash, according to a recent ruling by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino.
Prosecutors say Grossman and Erickson, 55, were driving from Julio’s restaurant to a Westlake lakeside home that evening in separate SUVs, but traveling close together, when they “raced” through the marked crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road at Saddle Mountain Drive, with Erickson in the lead.
Until last month, prosecutors had never revealed the nature of their relationship. But that changed, Castro said, because “the defense intends to argue that the black car that is at issue in this particular scenario is not Erickson’s.”
Grossman’s lawyers maintain that the lead vehicle was driven by someone else who could have struck the boys first.
“The people intend to put forth evidence that it was, in fact, Erickson,” Castro said. “We’re not looking to get into any salacious information.”
Erickson was charged with a misdemeanor. His case was resolved in February 2022 with a judge ordering him to make a public service announcement geared toward high school students about the importance of safe driving.
Jurors are expected to begin hearing testimony in a week or two, and the proceedings could last six weeks or longer.
Graphic testimony from Iskander is expected at the trial. During a preliminary hearing in 2022, she testified that she and Jacob were on inline skates, 5-year-old Zachary was on his scooter and Mark was on his skateboard as the family crossed the residential boulevard. Her husband and daughter were jogging nearby.
Iskander said she could not tell whether it was Grossman’s white SUV that struck her children, because she was diving out of the way with Zachary, or whether it was the black vehicle driven by Erickson.
“The speed was insane,” she said of the two SUVs. “They were zigzagging with each other as if they were playing or racing.
“They didn’t stop before the intersection. They didn’t stop at the intersection. They didn’t stop when an 11-year-old was on the hood of the car. … Nobody stopped,” Iskander testified.
She said Jacob was lying near the curb, and Mark was lying on the road with his “arm broken” and “blood coming out his mouth.” She testified that her 5-year-old watched paramedics perform CPR on his brother Jacob. Mark died at the scene, and Jacob died hours later at the hospital.
Jurors will likely hear from former L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Apodaca, who specializes in traffic crashes. During the preliminary hearing, he testified that he calculated Grossman was driving 71.7 mph when she struck the boys and that the car computer showed 73 mph. Under cross-examination, he said the older child, Mark, was struck by the vehicle and thrown 254 feet, the farthest he has known a human to be tossed in a crash.
Another deputy, Rafael Mejia, testified he had found Grossman a third of a mile away from the crash, stopped at the curb and saying she didn’t know why her airbag had been triggered.
But in pre-trial motions, Grossman’s legal team has sought to undermine Mejia’s credibility, noting the law enforcement officer is accused of inappropriately distributing photos from Kobe Bryant’s fatal helicopter crash.
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department investigated the crash involving the vehicle shown here.
(Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)
Buzbee, a larger-than-life Texas attorney who ran for Houston mayor, is likely to try to poke holes in the science of the crash data, upon which much of the prosecution is built.
In addition to bringing in experts to dispute the speed of Grossman’s vehicle, Buzbee said he has evidence showing that the city of Westlake Village knew the crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road was dangerous and described by the city engineer as a “blind curve” for motorists.
To get a second-degree murder conviction, Gould and Castro must prove that Grossman acted with implied malice and knew the act of driving at a high speed in a residential area was dangerous to human life.
John Hobson, one of Grossman’s attorneys, said that “the evidence supports we have a tragic traffic accident,” but there was no implied malice, and Grossman was not “driving with proximity attempt to kill.”
Prosecutors argue that that knowledge comes from her prior incidents. Jurors will likely hear from a California Highway Patrol officer who pulled over Grossman in 2013 after she was clocked going 92 mph on the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills and warned her she could kill someone.
Prosecutors have not offered a plea deal to the socialite, who has been out on $2 million bond. If convicted of all charges, she could face up to 34 years in prison.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
