VAN NUYS, CA — The mother of two young boys struck and killed as they crossed a Westlake Village street in September 2020 took the stand Monday in the murder trial of Rebecca Grossman: Nancy Iskander recalled the brutal scene where her sons, Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8, “died before my very eyes” after being struck by a car driven by Grossman when they were just steps away from their mother.
“At first, I couldn’t find them,” Iskander said. “I was screaming. I was in shock. I didn’t know what to do.” Wiping away tears, Iskander said she first found Jacob laying near her and that she found Mark with blood coming out of his mouth.
Jacob’s body was found 50 to 70 feet away from the crosswalk, while Mark’s body landed 254 feet down the road, according to Deputy District Attorney Ryan Gould.
Find out what's happening in Agoura Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Iskander took the stand Monday as the prosecution’s first witness in the trial of Grossman, who is charged with two felony counts each of murder and gross vehicular manslaughter and one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death in connection to the Westlake Village crash that killed Mark and Jacob.
Grossman’s attorneys argue that another car hit the boys first: one driven by ex-Dodgers player Scott Erickson — whom prosecutors say was Grossman’s boyfriend.
Find out what's happening in Agoura Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
“I know who killed them,” Iskander said in her testimony.
In his opening statement Friday, Grossman’s lead attorney Tony Buzbee claims a combination of shoddy police work and Erickson’s efforts to cover up his involvement led to authorities wrongly focusing on Grossman, who he claims struck the boys after Erickson.
“Scott Erickson’s car hit those children outside the crosswalk, causing one to vault and one to fall to the side and … seconds later they were hit by Mrs. Grossman’s car,” Buzbee said Friday.
Iskander called the defense’s version of events — animated in a computer-generated video — “complete science fiction” and said it has “nothing to do with what happened to my children.”
“I am 100 percent sure I was (in) the crosswalk with all of them,” Iskander said.
Prosecutors say Grossman was driving as fast as 81 mph just before the crash, with Erickson driving fast in front of her. The family — Iskander, Mark, Jacob and Iskander’s third son, Zachary — were all in the marked crosswalk.
‘They were playing, trying to beat each other some place. They were racing, constantly changing lanes, zig-zagging,” Iskander said in her testimony, according to the Daily Mail.
Iskander testified that she put her hand up in the air as she saw the two vehicles approaching at an “insane, crazy speed” and jumped out of the way of the black SUV (Erickson’s) with Zachary, 5 — without the SUV hitting anyone. She said she heard a “lot of noise” and the sound of the crash when the white SUV (Grossman’s) passed.
“My sons just died. Her car ran them over. I know that she killed them, I know. Please try to understand,” Iskander said during Buzbee’s cross examination, the Daily Mail reported.
On Friday, prosecutors said that Grossman’s car stopped itself over a third of a mile away from the crash site, a safety feature that kicked in when the airbags deployed. The car also called an emergency service itself — prosecutors played audio from that call where she insists she does not know what she hit.
“I was driving down the road and all of a sudden my, my, um, my bag exploded,” Grossman said, referring to her car’s airbags.
The operator told her that there had been reports of kids who had been struck by a car right near where Grossman was. “So that’s not you?” the operator asked.
“I don’t know what I hit because I just turned the corner and all of a sudden…” Grossman said.
“I turned the corner on Triunfo Canyon (Road) and all of a sudden my — the bag deployed in my face,” she continued.
Grossman never returned to the scene of the crash. Prosecutors say that a hospital employee will testify that Grossman told her that night that if wasn’t for her car stopping itself and calling for help, she would have been at home.
Erickson, who has denied any wrongdoing, has not been implicated by prosecutors in the boys’ death. He was charged with misdemeanor reckless driving in connection with the incident in a case that was resolved in 2022. A judge ordered him to make a public service announcement geared toward high school students about the importance of safe driving, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Buzbee claims Erickson pulled his car over and hid in the bushes after hitting the boys. When police spoke with him for the first time a week later, Erickson took efforts to misrepresent which of his two black SUVs he was driving, Buzbee said.
Grossman, 60, co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation and wife of prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Peter Grossman, faces a sentence of 34 years to life in prison if she’s convicted on all counts
Read more about the prosecution’s and defense’s competing theories about how Mark and Jacob were killed.
City News Service’s Terri Vermeulen Keith, reporting from court Monday, contributed to this story.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
Click Here: Tottenham Hotspur soccer tracksuit