A traffic reconstruction expert testified Friday that Rebecca Grossman’s choice to drive about 80 mph on a Westlake Village street in an alleged race with her boyfriend in 2020 was “irrational behavior” and led to the deaths of two boys.
Jeffrey Muttart, a former Groton, Connecticut, police officer who went on to get a doctoral degree, said Grossman’s speed was the definite cause of the Sept. 29, 2020, deaths of Mark and Jacob Iskander, aged 11 and 8, noting that the speed limit on that part of Triunfo Canyon Road where the accident occurred is 45 mph.
“It was irrational behavior,” Muttart told a Van Nuys Superior Court jury. “It was way outside the range of normal speeds for this road. It was off the charts.”
Muttart said that what he saw from his evaluation was consistent with Grossman being impaired. Vanessa Meneses, a senior forensic scientist at the Orange County Crime Lab, testified Wednesday that Grossman’s blood-alcohol content at the time of the 7:10 p.m. crash was .11 to .13. The legal limit for driving in California is .08.
Muttart said weather and road conditions were not a factor.
“The road was fine, the weather was fine, just some clouds in the sky, but light clouds in the sky,” Muttart said.
About 500 feet ahead of the crosswalk where the boys were struck there are warning signs of a pedestrian crossing ahead and a second warning about 50 feet before the crosswalk, Muttart said.
The boys had the right-of-way and both Grossman and her boyfriend, Scott Erickson, were required to yield to them, Muttart said.
The plaintiffs in the civil suit are the boys’ parents, Karim and Nancy Iskander, and the boys’ brother Zachary.
The lawsuit’s co-defendants are Grossman’s husband — Peter Grossman — and Erickson, her former boyfriend. Rebecca Grossman and Erickson had cocktails and the two later raced each other in their vehicles along Triunfo Canyon Road until they reached a crosswalk and the children were struck, according to the suit filed in January 2021.
The 62-year-old Hidden Hills socialite tried to flee the scene and likely would have succeeded had her vehicle not automatically shut down due to it sensing the massive impact that had just occurred, the Iskander attorneys state in their court papers.
The philanthropist then lied to law enforcement about her speed and how much she had to drink, and contended she did not know why her airbag suddenly deployed despite her vehicle sustaining massive front-end damage, the Iskander attorneys further state. Grossman and Erickson have blamed each other for hitting the boys.
Erickson was allegedly driving one of the Mercedes-Benz vehicles he owned, one from 2007 and another from 2016, in which he reputedly used the same license plates on the same vehicles at different times, a felony practice known as “cold-plating.”
In March, a panel of the Second District Court of Appeal upheld the conviction of the Grossman Burn Foundation co-founder. Grossman was found guilty Feb. 23, 2024, of two counts each of second-degree murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of hit-and-run driving in connection with the Sept. 29, 2020, deaths of Mark and Jacob Iskander, aged 11 and 8.
Grossman was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.