A teen witness at Rebecca Grossman’s murder trial gave a dramatic account of the ‘war zone’ scene at the pedestrian crossing where she found traumatized mother Nancy Iskander screaming and the tragic sight of the shoes belonging to one of her two fatally injured sons strewn across the road.
Dorsa Khoedami – who was 16 at the time Jacob, 8 and Mark, 11 Iskander were killed in the horrific crash – told the jury Thursday that she had just finished playing tennis when she ‘heard a very loud noise that was very alarming’ then a second loud bang, followed by screaming.
‘I told my mother, let’s go’, she said and, after calling 911, she started running toward the nearby marked crosswalk in Westlake Village where she found a distraught Nancy Iskander barefoot and a pair of shoes lying nearby.
The murder trial of Rebecca Grossman (pictured on Wednesday) heard testimony from a teenage witness – a schoolmate of her daughter Alexis (right) – who was at the scene of the horrific 2020 crash
Mark (left) and Jacob Iskander, 11 and 8 respectively, were killed in the horrific crash on September 29, 2020. On Thursday, witness Dorsa Khoedami recalled finding their ‘screaming’ mother Nancy (right) at the scene
The teenage girl told the court she started running toward the nearby marked crosswalk in Westlake Village (pictured) where she found a distraught Nancy Iskander barefoot and a pair of shoes lying nearby
Thinking they were Nancy’s shoes, she said she went to pick up them up to tell the mom she should put them on, she told the jury.
‘Nancy was still screaming and said, ”they’re my son’s shoes”,’ she said.
Later, said Khoedami – a schoolmate of Grossman’s daughter Alexis – her doctor mother ‘described the crash scene as a war zone.’
Grossman, 60 – wearing black pants, beige blouse and black cardigan with a white rose pattern at Van Nuys court Thursday – is charged with two counts of second degree murder in the tragic deaths of the Iskander brothers in September 2020.
The wealthy socialite is facing a maximum sentence of 34 years to life in prison if convicted of the murders and she’s also charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one of hit-and-run driving resulting in death.
She has pleaded not guilty to all charges
The founder with her husband, prominent plastic surgeon Peter Grossman, of the Grossman Burn Foundation, Grossman has been free on $2million bail since her arrest more than three years ago.
While prosecutors insists it was Grossman’s car that hit and killed the boys, her defense team claims that it was the black SUV driven by her then-boyfriend, ex-pro baseball player Scott Erickson, 56 – with whom she had been drinking margaritas earlier – who was to blame.
Prosecutors say Grossman was racing with her lover at 81mph in a 45mph zone when her white Mercedes SUV struck and killed the boys
Grossman has pleaded not guilty to all charges but faces a maximum of 34 years in prison if convicted
Prosecutors allege Grossman had been racing her baseball player lover Scott Erickson, 56, before the crash. Erickson won a World Series with the 1991 Minnesota Twins and went on to play for five other MLB teams
Erickson, who was romantically involved with Grossman during a separation from her husband, was allegedly ‘racing’ with her as he drove his black SUV through the crosswalk where the Iskanders were walking, seconds before Grossman’s car.
He was charged with misdemeanor reckless driving and his case was resolved in February 2022 with a judge ordering him to make a public service announcement for high school students about the importance of safe driving.
In court Thursday, Grossman’s defense team tried to persuade Judge Joseph Brandolino to allow them to recreate in the courtroom the two air bags deploying as they had in Grossman’s Mercedes SUV at the time the boys were hit.
Prosecutors quickly objected, telling the judge: ‘We do not need to be bringing in airbags and blowing them off in the courtroom’ and asking him to order a video demonstration instead.
After hearing from airbag and seatbelt expert William Broadhead that when an airbag deploys, ‘it’s incredibly loud and explosive, like setting off a cherry bomb’ the judge canned the idea of a demonstration in the courtroom and said jurors could watch a video instead.
Nancy Iskander was crossing the road with the brothers and her youngest son Zachary, 5, when they were hit. Nancy and her husband are pictured leaving court on February 6
Grossman has pleaded not guilty to two counts of second degree murder in the ‘hit-and-run’ deaths of eight year-old Jacob and Mark Iskander, 11, at a Westlake Village pedestrian crosswalk
But he did say yes to a courtroom demo of the ‘seatbelt pretensioner’ which tightens seatbelts in an accident.
Like airbags, it also fires off a controlled explosive device to deploy but it’s a much smaller charge.
In the event even the seatbelt pretensioner was banned from the courtroom by the LA Sheriff who, said Judge Brandolino, ‘does not want any pyrotechnics in the courthouse.’
Broadhead told the court that Grossman’s car had a total of five ‘pyrotechnic devices’ – two for each airbag and one for the seatbelt pretensioner.
When they go off, he said: ‘They stun. You don’t know what to do. You don’t know if it’s a bomb or a sniper….you jump out of your skin.’
In the case of Grossman’s accident Broadhead said she’ would not be able to distinguish between a pedestrian impact and the airbag deploying.
‘It’s very violent and extremely loud. It stuns you and it’s confusing if you don’t know you’ve been in an accident.’
He added that the airbags in Grossman’s Mercedes SUV ‘are next supposed to go off in a collision with a pedestrian.’