Testimony is expected to continue Wednesday in the trial of Rebecca Grossman, who is charged with the murder of two boys in Westlake Village in 2020.
Two prosecution witnesses testified Tuesday in Grossman’s trial and said they saw a pair of Mercedes-Benz SUVs speeding before the white vehicle struck a young boy who was crossing with his family in a Westlake Village crosswalk in 2020.
Grossman, the 60-year-old co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, was charged in December 2020 with two felony counts each of murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, along with one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death, in connection with the Sept. 29, 2020, deaths of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and his 8-year-old brother, Jacob.
The older boy died at the scene and his 8-year-old sibling died at a hospital.
Grossman’s attorneys insisted she was not the driver responsible for the deadly crash, which they contend occurred outside a crosswalk. The defense pointed the blame at former Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Scott Erickson, whom they allege was driving a black Mercedes SUV just ahead of Grossman’s white Mercedes SUV.
Erickson was described by a prosecutor as Grossman’s boyfriend at the time.
One eyewitness, Jake Sands, told the Van Nuys jury that he believed the vehicles that passed his friend’s car were traveling at “about double the speed limit” of 45 mph.
Sands said he saw the family “inside of the crosswalk” as they crossed the street, noting that the area was illuminated by a street light.
“Seeing the speed and force of the cars … I just instantly thought it’s too late,” he said.
Sands said he saw the victims’ mother try to pull one child out of the way as the black SUV was approaching, telling jurors that the black car “tries to avoid the kids by moving out of the way as best as possible.”
He said he saw the white SUV following the black SUV, and only saw one of the boys being struck.
“You actually saw the white car hit him?” Deputy District Attorney Ryan Gould asked Sands, who said he was a passenger in a vehicle behind the SUVs.
“I saw him (the boy) go airborne,” the eyewitness responded, saying later that he saw the contact with the white vehicle.
“Did you ever see the black SUV hit a child?” the prosecutor asked.
“No,” Sands responded.
Sands’ friend, Yasamin Eftekhari, who was driving an Infiniti QX, told jurors that she was passed by the two vehicles, which she estimated were going between 70 and 75 mph.
She said she was “99.9%” sure that the family who was crossing the street was in the crosswalk and saw the white vehicle strike one of the boys, then subsequently realized after the crash that two boys had been struck. She told jurors that she did not see the black SUV strike either of the boys and that she believed the white SUV was ahead of the black SUV.
But she said under cross-examination by lead defense attorney Tony Buzbee that she did hear two impacts.
Both of the witnesses said the defense’s animation video depicting the crash was not accurate based on what he saw.
Another witness, Susan Manners, said she was out walking when she observed the family waiting at the crosswalk “lined up like little ducks in a row,” calling it a “sweet moment.”
She said she noticed the family start crossing the street, and “realized that it sounded like a train was coming … an enormous noise of cars,” which she said was so unusual in the sleepy area.
“They were coming really fast,” she said of the vehicles. “I thought, `What do I do in this moment? They’re going to get hit.”’
She testified that she jumped into the bike lane and waved at the vehicles in an effort to slow them down, but said it had no effect.
She said she believed the vehicles were going “double” the 45 mph speed limit — about 90 mph.
“It was that scary and that fast,” she said.
When Deputy District Attorney Jamie Castro asked what happened next, the woman told jurors “there were two impacts.”
She said her view of the first impact was obstructed by being behind a car, but said she saw the second impact in which a vehicle in the left lane hit one of the boys within seconds after the first impact.
“I did see the body flying up into the air. I didn’t see the impact because that would have been from the front,” she said. “I did not see the body come down to the street.”
She told jurors that she was “frantic” when she called 911 and that she subsequently took a series of photos after the crash in order to preserve the way the scene looked before first responders arrived.
The victims’ mother, Nancy, sobbed as she rushed out of the courtroom after seeing a photo of her son Mark’s body following the crash.
“This is the boy that I saw hit in the second impact,” she said of Mark, noting that he was much further down the roadway. “I can’t even say how horrific the impact was and I knew that he was deceased.”
When asked if she attributed the impacts to two vehicles, she said, “Yes,” based on where she was standing, what she heard and what she observed.
“I don’t know who was driving either car,” she said, telling jurors that she had focused not on the vehicles but on trying to save the people in the crosswalk ahead.
Of the video animation done of the crash by a defense expert, she said it did not appear to be an accurate description of what she saw. She noted that the family was in the crosswalk — not out of it — and that one of the boys was behind the rest of the family.
“I didn’t see it play out like it does in this video at all,” she said.
She said the boy she saw being struck did not fly as high in the air as the defense animation suggested.
She said under cross-examination by Buzbee that the prosecution’s animation video isn’t what she saw, either.
“Does this match in any way what you saw?” Buzbee asked the woman.
“No, this is incorrect,” she said.
In emotional testimony as the court session drew to a close, Los Angeles County Firefighter/Paramedic Bryan Hunt described coming across Jacob’s body after being dispatched to the scene of the collision.
Hunt said the boy was taken to a trauma center after efforts to revive him resulted in a pulse being felt. Apparently choking back tears, he described firefighters being sent back to the scene several hours later to rinse blood off the street.
The defendant — who could face up to 34 years to life in prison if convicted as charged — is the wife of Dr. Peter Grossman, who is the director of the Grossman Burn Centers and son of the center’s late founder, A. Richard Grossman.
Rebecca and Peter Grossman were separated at the time of the crash, according to a statement by her husband posted on a website supporting her.
She is a co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation and a former publisher of Westlake Magazine.
Grossman is free on $2 million bond.