A paramedic who treated a woman accused of running over and killing two young children after lunch with her lover told court Thursday that the woman complained about having to stop her car.
Rebecca Grossman, 60, is charged with murder after the September 29, 2020 crash that killed eight-year-old Jacob Iskander and his 11-year-old brother Mark.
The children were crossing the street at a crosswalk in Westlake Village, California, when Grossman, prosecutors say, plowed into them. She claims another car hit them.
Teryl Grasso, a paramedic who works in the emergency room at Los Robles Regional Medical Center, testified Thursday that Grossman, whose airbags went off and whose car had an incident and disabled itself, complained about being at the hospital.
“If they hadn’t disabled my car, I’d be home right now in my garage,” Grossman said, according to Grasso.
Rebecca Grossman and her husband Peter, a plastic surgeon, are seen leaving court Thursday.
Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8, died while crossing the street in September 2020.
Grossman’s white Mercedes SUV appears in the photo moments after the accident.
Grasso added: “I’m not saying she didn’t care about those kids.”
Grossman’s attorney, Tony Buzbee, asked Grasso why it took him three years to file the lawsuit and why he said he was “stalking the news.”
“I was stalking the news and I had to go to therapy too,” Grasso responded. “I was traumatized.”
Grasso said, according to Los Angeles Timeswhich was brought forward because of Grossman’s comments that night and his behavior at the time.
Jamie Castro, the deputy district attorney, asked if she was unsure about coming forward because of concerns about patient confidentiality.
Grasso said yes, adding that he sought expert advice on interpreting the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
He said he learned he could report comments under these circumstances.
Grasso said he received therapy for nine months after the accident.
“I still can’t talk about that night without crying,” she said.
On Wednesday, Deputy Rafael Mejia told the Van Nuys jury that he responded to the scene shortly after the collision.
He said he was told to look for a white vehicle with front-end damage.
Mejia said he found Grossman about three-tenths of a mile away standing outside her white Mercedes-Benz SUV, which had front-end damage.
“She told me that her vehicle was disabled by Mercedes-Benz,” Mejia told the jury.
Mejia said the airbags had deployed and that Grossman told him he had hit something, but he didn’t know what he hit.
“She sat in the back seat of my vehicle,” Mejia told the court.
‘She kept telling me to call her husband; Her husband could help those children. She told me several times to call him.
Tony Buzbee, Grossman’s attorney, leaves court Thursday
Nancy Iskander, Jacob and Mark’s mother, is seen at the Van Nuys courthouse.
Grossman is married to plastic surgeon Peter Grossman, who specializes in treating burn victims. He has supported her, despite the revelation that Grossman was having an affair with former Los Angeles Dodgers star Scott Erickson at the time.
He had had lunch with Erickson, drank margaritas, and the two were driving together in separate vehicles when the accident occurred.
Prosecutors played a recording of the phone call automatically initiated by his car.
Grossman, according to Court newsThe responder asks: ‘Did you hit someone or did someone hit you?’
“I don’t know,” Grossman responded.
“I was driving down…the highway and all of a sudden my bag exploded.”
A Los Angeles County Fire Department operator heard about the call and told Grossman, “They said two kids were hit by skates.”
“No,” Grossman said, sounding distressed.
“So that’s not you?” the dispatcher asked.
“I don’t know,” Grossman said. “I don’t know what I hit.”
—Are you not sure if you have hit a child? the dispatcher asked.
‘Turn the corner. It was dark. And suddenly my…’—he interrupted himself and never finished the sentence.
Buzbee, a high-profile attorney who ran for Houston mayor in 2019 and last year defended accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, told jurors in opening statements Friday that he would prove Grossman was not responsible for the deaths of the two boys.
He mocked a prosecutor’s video reconstructing the accident that showed Mark and Jacob being hit by Grossman’s white Mercedes.
Mark Iskander, 11, and his younger brother Jacob, eight, died in the 2020 crash.
Grossman is accused of killing brothers Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8, after crashing her Mercedes into the two boys in Westlake Village in September 2020.
The Iskander brothers “didn’t stand a chance,” prosecutor Ryan Gould said in his opening statements at Rebecca Grossman’s trial.
“No science could support that,” Buzbee said.
He accused police of “taking the easy way out” and blaming Grossman in a “rush to judgment.”
Buzbee called the police investigation into the crash “absolutely terrible” and added that there is “not enough evidence to convict” Grossman.
‘She didn’t drop anything and someone else did. “The prosecution is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” she said.
Buzbee argued that the Westlake Village crosswalk, where the children were killed, is “dangerous” and “poorly marked.”
And he also stated that Mark and Jacob were not actually in the crosswalk but 50 feet to the north when they were hit.
He refuted the prosecution’s claim that Grossman attempted to “flee the scene.”
And Buzbee said witnesses would say they heard two impacts, adding that while prosecutors “suggest that one vehicle did that, scientifically that’s impossible.”
He also said he plans to present expert witnesses who will say Grossman was only traveling 52 mph, not the 81 mph the prosecutor claims.
She said her lover Scott Erickson’s car, which was in front of Grossman’s, was going “over 70” before the tragedy.
As for prosecutors’ claims that Grossman was under the influence of alcohol and Valium, another of his attorneys, Mark Thiessen, told jurors, “That is simply false.”
Prosecutors say Grossman was chasing Scott Erickson (left), who was driving a separate pickup truck, after a cocktail lunch at Julio’s in Westlake Village.
Erickson played with the Los Angeles Dodgers from 2005 for one year, then finished his career with the New York Yankees in 2006.
Rebecca Grossman is seen with her husband, Dr. Peter Grossman, a renowned plastic surgeon who runs a specialized burn unit. The couple appears together in October 2011.
He called the police investigation “a disaster” and called the field sobriety and breathalyzer tests performed on Grossman “poorly administered.”
Thiessen argued that she was “polite, consistent and cooperative” with police at the scene and that she “had not lost any physical or mental faculties.”
“She didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, adding that this was a case of, “We have two dead children.” We need someone to blame.
Gould, however, told the jury that earlier that day Grossman had drunk a half margarita at a friend’s house, then a full margarita with Erickson at Julio’s in Westlake Village before deciding to drive home to watch a presidential debate between Biden and Trump. on TV.
A witness who saw Grossman and Erickson after Julio’s, running before the accident, recalled thinking, “They’re going to kill someone the way they’re going,” Gould said.
After the horrific collision, he said, the children’s mother, Nancy Iskander, could see Jacob lying in the road, but she couldn’t see Mark because he had been hit and thrown too far away.
“At the speed that Mrs. Grossman was going, he (Mark) was projected 254 feet away,” Gould said.
‘And she didn’t stop…she continued down the road.
‘Mark died from traumatic blunt force injuries. Jacob was beheaded internally; the force of the collision severed his spinal cord from the inside.’
Gould told the court that the black box inside Grossman’s Mercedes indicated that just before the crash she was “speeding,” driving up to 81 mph in a 45 mph neighborhood.
“If I had driven 45 miles per hour, I wouldn’t have hit Mark and Jacob,” Gould said.
Grossman faces a maximum sentence of 34 years to life in prison if convicted.