A judge on Monday sentenced Rebecca Grossman to 15 years to life in prison for speeding through a Westlake Village crosswalk and hitting and killing two brothers four years ago, calling her actions “reckless and unquestionably negligent.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino sentenced the philanthropist to an additional three years in prison, to run concurrently for fleeing the scene of the fatal accident, after listening to an angry cry from Nancy Iskander, the mother of 11-year-old Mark Iskander and 8-year-old Jacob Iskander, who demanded a punishment commensurate with the deaths of her two sons.
“She’s a coward,” Iskander said of Grossman.
But Brandolino said Grossman “is not the monster that prosecutors have portrayed.”
Grossman, 60, who appeared in court with his hair in a ponytail and wearing a brown shirt over a white T-shirt and slacks, agreed to pay $47,161.89 in damages to Iskander’s family. Her lawyer said the co-founder of the Grossman Byrne Foundation had already donated $25,000 to help with funeral expenses.
The sentence brings to an end a nearly four-year criminal saga in which she refused to accept responsibility for the boys’ deaths and tried to manipulate the case from prison even after she was convicted.
Dr. Peter Grossman, from right, leaves the Van Nuys courthouse with her two children, Nicholas and Alexis, after Rebecca Grossman was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison on second-degree murder and other charges stemming from the deaths of two boys in Westlake Village on Monday.
(Brian van der Burg/Los Angeles Times)
“I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t see anybody,” Grossman said at the sentencing. “I would have run into a brick wall. I don’t know why God didn’t take my life.”
She said after the crash she went into a state of denial and felt powerless to do anything.
Gazing at Nancy Iskander, she said through tears: “My pain is only a fraction of your pain.”
After a six-week trial filled with dramatic testimony, Grossman was convicted in February of two counts of murder, two counts of felony vehicular manslaughter and one count of hit-and-run resulting in death in the September 2020 deaths of his two children.
The boys’ mother testified at trial that her older children were walking ahead of her and her younger son in a crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road when she heard the sound of engines and two sport utility vehicles coming toward them at high speed.
Iskander grabbed her 5-year-old son and ran for safety. Her next memory is seeing Jacob and Mark lying in the road.
Grossman was driving behind former Dodgers player Scott Erickson, who had been having cocktails with his girlfriend at a nearby restaurant that day. Evidence presented at trial showed Erickson was driving 81 mph and continued on for another half mile after hitting the children.
Nancy Iskander and her husband, Karim, spoke to the media after Rebecca Grossman was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison on Monday.
(Brian van der Burg/Los Angeles Times)
Prosecutors Habib Balian, Ryan Gould and Jaime Castro wrote the judge last week that Grossman has shown no remorse. “The defendant’s conduct from September 29, 2020 to today, demonstrated by a complete lack of remorse and a narcissistic sense of superiority, leads only to the conclusion that she does not deserve any leniency whatsoever,” they said.
More than a dozen of the Iskander brothers’ friends and family appeared before the judge on Monday to describe the trauma they are left with in the wake of the boys’ deaths and to ask Grossman to impose a long prison sentence.
The Rev. Chami Delkeskamp of Ascension Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks said the fatal accident has left a scar on the entire community, with many children now afraid to cross the street. Giving Grossman probation “would be an affront to justice,” Delkeskamp said.
Mark Iskander, 11, from left, and his brother Jacob, were killed in 2020 after being hit by Rebecca Grossman in a Westlake Village crosswalk.
(Family photo)
“This senseless crime has taken two innocent souls,” said former babysitter Natalie Nashed.
The boys’ uncle, Sherif Iskander, said Grossman was self-centered and arrogant and “tried to get away with murder.”
“To this day, she has never apologized to our family,” he said.
“I just live to die and grieve for the rest of my life,” the boys’ grandmother, Joyce Ghobrial, told the court. Her voice trembling, Nancy Iskander stood and touched her mother’s back to comfort her.
Grossman slumped in her seat and broke down in tears as Jacob’s best friend, Bodie Wallace, spoke. The 13-year-old said the song “10,000 Reasons” makes her sad because it makes her think about “the 10,000 reasons why I didn’t say ‘I’m sorry’ right away.”
Grossman’s defense team, led by James Spertus, argued that the mother of two, who has no criminal record, should avoid prison time and asked the judge to consider suspended probation or a reduced sentence.
Her lawyers painted a much different picture of Grossman as a “humanitarian” who worked to help female burn victims and victims of domestic violence.
While calling the Iskanders’ loss “immeasurable,” Judge Spertus wrote in a sentencing memorandum last week that the Grossmans had suffered a separate loss in the loss of the mother of their two children, and that Grossman himself had lost purpose in life and “feels overwhelming sadness, despair and regret for his role in this tragedy.”
He attached several letters from Grossman’s family and friends, including one from Grossman’s son, Nick, who wrote, “This is nothing compared to what the Iskander family is going through, but since the accident, it feels like the world hates my mother and that everyone is against our family.”
“My mother is not the bad person that the media portrays her to be,” he said in court on Monday.
Grossman’s lawyers played a 30-minute video in which her husband, Dr. Peter Grossman, said, “We don’t compare our suffering to theirs.” The video also included her daughter, Alexis, describing how her mother was abandoned by her father, sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend and “every kind of abuse by the time she was 13.” Nick described his mother as “a very spiritual person.”
Grossman, who dropped out of college because she couldn’t afford it and became a flight attendant before starting a medical device company, said her husband, and she told the story of how she took in a badly burned 10-year-old Afghan girl into her home.
“I give my heart and love to Rebecca,” Zubaida, a burns victim who is now an adult, said in the video. “She is my mother.”
But Nancy Iskander dismissed the allegations out of compassion for Grossman, saying she had been at the hospital and seen him outside the emergency room when doctors asked whether they wanted to take Jacob off life support.
“She looked me right in the eyes,” the grieving mother said, tears in her eyes and emotion in her voice, “and that was the moment I had to say something.”
