A Hidden Hills socialite struck two younger boys in a Westlake Village crosswalk — an impression laborious sufficient to trigger extreme front-end harm to her Mercedes.
However was it homicide?
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11:45 a.m. Jan. 25, 2024An earlier model of this text stated the jury for Rebecca Grossman’s trial will embrace 9 ladies and three males. The panel will encompass 9 males and three ladies.
On Friday, the query goes earlier than a jury. Greater than three years after the deaths of Jacob and Mark Iskander, 8 and 11, a panel of 9 males and three ladies will hear opening statements within the trial of Rebecca Grossman. She is charged with two counts of second-degree homicide, in addition to vehicular manslaughter and hit-and-run fees.
After winnowing the jury pool from about 300, prosecutors and protection attorneys settled on the panel Wednesday that may hear from dozens of witnesses in what is anticipated to be a extremely charged and emotional six-week trial. Six alternate jurors might be picked Thursday.
“We’re very pleased with the jury,” stated Tony Buzbee, Grossman’s lead lawyer, outdoors the Van Nuys courthouse.
Los Angeles County prosecutors say Grossman was behind the wheel of a white Mercedes SUV that fatally struck the boys in a marked crosswalk. Sheriff’s investigators say that she was driving as quick as 81 mph and that, after placing the youngsters, her automotive continued on for a minimum of 1 / 4 of a mile earlier than it shut down.
Buzbee has maintained that his consumer was not the one motorist to cross by the crosswalk when the youngsters have been struck that night time.
Among the many first witnesses jurors will hear from is the boys’ mom, Nancy Iskander, who stated she was crossing when she heard the roar of approaching engines.
Iskander stated she held up her proper hand in a determined effort to cease the oncoming autos and dived for security, grabbing her 5-year-old son. Her subsequent reminiscence is of her two older boys crumpled on Triunfo Canyon Street.
“They didn’t cease earlier than the intersection. They didn’t cease on the intersection. They didn’t cease when an 11-year-old was on the hood of the automotive. … No person stopped,” Iskander testified at a previous listening to within the case.
The homicide counts towards Grossman within the Sept. 29, 2020, crash are considerably unprecedented as she has not been charged with driving beneath the affect, which is usually used to show gross negligence in vehicular fatalities, based mostly on proof within the preliminary listening to.
Prosecutors say after they requested Grossman’s authorized staff whether or not it needed to settle the case, they acquired a response that they don’t usually encounter: Her attorneys stated they needed a dismissal.
Grossman has pleaded not responsible, and her authorized staff — led by Buzbee, a former Houston mayoral contender — says proof will present that she wasn’t rushing and that different autos went by the realm.
Regardless of huge front-end harm to Grossman’s SUV and witness testimony that she hit the 2 younger brothers, her attorneys are anticipated to inform jurors that the automotive was certainly one of many autos passing by the crosswalk on the time of the lethal incident, and that authorities have wrongly centered on her.
A home made signal outdoors the Van Nuys Courthouse in 2022 exhibits a picture of Mark Iskander, 11, and brother Jacob, 8.
(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Instances)
Grossman was driving behind Scott Erickson, a former Dodgers participant, who prosecutors alleged was romantically concerned together with her and had been ingesting cocktails together with her at a close-by restaurant.
Buzbee says there are witnesses who’ll testify that a number of automobiles hit the boys. “The protection’s reconstruction consultants will present that Grossman’s car was not the primary car to hit the youngsters, and one other eyewitness indicated that she was additionally not the final car that made contact with the youngsters,” Buzbee stated.
“These witness reviews and video existed from the primary night time of the accident, and as a substitute of attempting to determine the opposite autos, the sheriff took the simple route and centered on the driving force of the one car that stayed after the accident occurred, Rebecca Grossman.”
Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Gould, in pretrial-motion discussions, has pushed again, saying Grossman’s attorneys haven’t any basis for the argument that every other car struck the boys.
Buzbee argued in court docket final week that sheriff’s investigators by no means checked Erickson’s black Mercedes SUV for harm, regardless that he drove by the marked crosswalk a number of seconds earlier than Grossman.
He produced a photograph of the black SUV that he alleged Erickson was driving; the picture confirmed the automotive had some harm. However prosecutors say they’ve seen no proof that the pictured harm is linked to the incident.
Taking this tack is dangerous, stated Louis Shapiro, a protection lawyer not concerned within the case. The Instances requested Shapiro about utilizing the transfer as a option to shift blame and create cheap doubt.
“Until there’s forensic proof to assist a principle that one other automotive was concerned, the jury goes to see this as a determined try and absolve her of legal responsibility,” Shapiro stated, “and it may very a lot hang-out her at sentencing.”
Grossman’s on-site breathalyzer check confirmed a blood-alcohol content material of 0.076%, barely under California’s authorized restrict of 0.08%. A blood pattern taken three hours after the crash registered on the 0.08% mark. She just isn’t charged with driving beneath the affect.
Prosecutors Gould and Jamie Castro plan to indicate that Valium was additionally present in Grossman’s system and can argue that, along with the alcohol, the prescription drug impaired her driving.
Jurors might be allowed to listen to that Grossman — who’s married to Dr. Peter Grossman, a famend plastic surgeon who heads the West Hills-based Grossman Burn Middle — was in a romantic relationship with Erickson on the time of the crash. Peter Grossman, in a press release, has stated they have been separated on the time.
Prosecutors say Rebecca Grossman was simply toes behind Erickson’s SUV when she sped by the crosswalk.
“She just isn’t responsible of any of the accusations which have been made towards her,” Buzbee stated. “She was not impaired, she was not racing, she was not going the pace that they declare, and he or she by no means fled the scene.”
Erickson, who has denied any wrongdoing, was charged with a misdemeanor.
His lawyer, Mark Werksman, informed Metropolis Information Service in 2021 that Erickson “wasn’t racing. He’s charged with one rely of reckless driving. He wasn’t driving recklessly. He had nothing to do with this accident, actually, he didn’t, and any suggestion that he did is simply false.”
The lawyer stated Erickson handed safely by the intersection earlier than the crash occurred. “He didn’t witness the accident or have any half in inflicting it or play any function in it,” Werksman stated.
Erickson’s case was resolved, with a decide ordering that he make a public service announcement on protected driving. Neither he nor his attorneys have replied to requests for remark. He’s on the prosecutors’ record of greater than 60 witnesses they may name.
Graphic testimony from Iskander is anticipated on the trial. Throughout a preliminary listening to in 2022, she testified that she and Jacob have been carrying inline skates, 5-year-old Zachary was on his scooter, and Mark was on his skateboard because the household crossed the residential boulevard. Her husband and daughter have been jogging close by.
Iskander testified she couldn’t inform whether or not it was Grossman’s white SUV that struck her youngsters, as a result of she was diving out of the best way with Zachary.
“The pace was insane,” she stated of the 2 SUVs. “They have been zigzagging with one another as in the event that they have been taking part in or racing,” Iskander testified.
Through the preliminary listening to, a deputy who makes a speciality of crash incidents testified that he calculated Grossman was driving 71.7 mph when she struck the boys and that the automotive pc confirmed 73 mph. Underneath cross-examination, he stated the older baby, Mark, was struck by the car and thrown 254 toes, the farthest he has identified a human to be tossed in a crash.
The L.A. County Sheriff’s Division investigated the crash involving the car proven right here.
(Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division)
To get a second-degree homicide conviction, Gould and Castro should show that Grossman acted with implied malice and knew the act of driving at a excessive pace in a residential space was harmful to human life.
John Hobson, certainly one of Grossman’s attorneys, stated that “the proof helps we have now a tragic site visitors accident,” however that there was no implied malice.
Prosecutors argue that that information comes from her prior incidents. Jurors will most likely hear from a California Freeway 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 may kill somebody.
