By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH
VAN NUYS — A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy testified Wednesday in the murder trial of socialite Rebecca Grossman that he didn’t find any evidence indicating that more than one vehicle was involved in a collision in Westlake Village that left two boys dead, saying he only saw debris from a white vehicle.
Deputy Rafael Mejia told the Van Nuys jury that he responded to the scene shortly after the Sept. 29, 2020, collision that left 11-year-old Mark Iskander and his 8-year-old brother Jacob dead, and said he was informed to look for a white vehicle with front-end damage.
The deputy 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 jurors, saying that the airbags had gone off and that Grossman told him that she had hit something but she didn’t know what she struck.
Grossman, the 60-year-old co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation, is charged with two felony counts each of murder and vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence, along with one felony count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death.
The prosecution alleges that Grossman was speeding at the time she hit the boys. The older boy died at the scene, and his 8-year-old sibling died at a hospital.
Grossman’s attorneys insisted she was not the driver responsible for the deadly crash, which they contend occurred outside a crosswalk. The defense pointed the blame at former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson, whom they allege was driving a black Mercedes SUV just ahead of Grossman’s white Mercedes SUV.
Erickson was described by a prosecutor as Grossman’s boyfriend at the time.
Under questioning by Deputy District Attorney Jamie Castro, the sheriff’s deputy said he didn’t find any debris consistent with a black SUV or any kind of black vehicle.
“We didn’t see any indicators there was another vehicle,” Mejia said, indicating that the debris at the scene indicated a white vehicle had been involved. He said a Mercedes-Benz emblem was found among the debris at the scene of the collision.
Of his interaction with Grossman, the deputy said, “She kept telling me to call her husband … Her husband could help those kids.”
He said he smelled “alcohol coming from her person,” and contacted a unit to come to perform a DUI investigation.
The deputy said he saw a person who identified herself as Grossman’s daughter and said she was there to pick up her mother. He said he told her that she couldn’t go home with her. He said he never saw a man hiding in the bushes watching the police investigation — and would have considered that highly suspicious.
In his opening statement, lead defense attorney Tony Buzbee alleged that Erickson’s vehicle went through the intersection 2 1/2 seconds before Grossman and hit the two children first. He told jurors that Erickson stopped up the road, hid in the bushes and watched after the collision.
Under cross-examination, the deputy said he wasn’t aware that a black SUV had gone through the intersection mere seconds before Grossman.
He acknowledged that the first debris from the crash was found 50 feet away from the crosswalk, and said he relied in giving his estimate of the point of impact on the accounts of witnesses who indicated that the victims were in the crosswalk when they were hit. He noted that there was no fluid found in the crosswalk.
In testimony Tuesday, two prosecution witnesses testified that they saw a pair of Mercedes SUVs speeding before the white vehicle struck a young boy. One of those witnesses testified that she heard two impacts, which another prosecution witness said she had also heard.
The defendant — who could face up to 34 years to life in prison if convicted as charged — is the wife of Dr. Peter Grossman, the director of the Grossman Burn Centers and son of the centers’ late founder, A. Richard Grossman.
Rebecca and Peter Grossman were separated at the time of the crash, according to a statement by her husband posted on a website supporting her.
She is a co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation and a former publisher of Westlake Magazine.
Grossman is free on $2 million bond.