‘Killer’ socialite Rebecca Grossman told hospital worker ‘If they didn’t disable my car, I would have been home right now’ after ‘murdering’ two young brothers with her Mercedes, court hears

An EMT who tended to a woman accused of mowing down and killing two young boys after a drunken lunch with her lover told the court Thursday that the woman complained about having to stop her car.

Rebecca Grossman, 60, is charged with murder following the September 29, 2020 crash that killed eight-year-old Jacob Iskander and his 11-year-old brother Mark.

The boys were crossing the road at a crosswalk in Westlake Village when Grossman crashed into them, according to prosecutors. She claims another car hit them.

Teryl Grasso, an EMT who worked in the emergency room at Los Robles Regional Medical Center, testified Thursday that Grossman — whose airbags deployed and whose car registered an incident and shut down — complained about being in the hospital.

“If they hadn’t disabled my car, I would be at home in my garage right now,” Grossman said, according to Grasso.

Grasso added, “I’m not saying she didn’t care about those kids.”

Grossman’s attorney, Tony Buzbee, asked Grossman why it took three years for her to come forward with the claim, and why she said she was “stalking the news.”

“I was stalking the news and I also had to go to therapy,” Grasso replied. “I was traumatized.”

Grasso said according to The Los Angeles Timesthat she came forward because of Grossman’s comments that night and her behavior at the time.

Jamie Castro, the deputy district attorney, asked if she was unsure whether she would come forward out of concerns about patient confidentiality.

Grasso said yes, adding that she was seeking expert advice on interpreting the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

She said she learned she could report comments under these circumstances.

Grasso said she received nine months of therapy after the crash.

“I still can’t talk about that night without crying,” she said.

Deputy Rafael Mejia told the Van Nuys jury on Wednesday 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, outside her white Mercedes-Benz SUV, which had front-end damage.

“She told me her vehicle was disabled by Mercedes-Benz,” Mejia told jurors.

Mejia said the airbags went off and Grossman told him she hit something, but she didn’t know what she hit.

“She was in the backseat of my car,” Mejia told the court.

“She kept telling me to call her husband; her husband could help those children. Several times she told me to call him.”

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 LA Dodgers star Scott Erickson at the time.

She had had lunch with Erickson, had margaritas, and the pair were driving together in separate vehicles when the accident happened.

Prosecutors played a recording of the phone call automatically initiated by her car.

Grossman, according to Courthouse newsthe care provider asks: ‘Did you hit someone or did someone hit you?’

“I don’t know,” Grossman replied.

“I was driving down the road and suddenly my bag exploded.”

An LA County Fire Department dispatcher was answered the call and told Grossman, “They said two kids got hit with roller skates.”

“No,” Grossman said angrily.

“So it’s not you?” the coordinator asked.

“I don’t know,” Grossman said. “I don’t know what I hit.”

“Are you not sure if you hit children?” the coordinator asked.

‘I turned the corner. It was dark. And suddenly my…’ she trailed off and never finished the sentence.

Buzbee, a high-profile attorney who ran for mayor of Houston in 2019 and defended ousted Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last year, told the jury in his opening statements Friday that he would prove Grossman was not responsible for the death of the two boys.

He mocked a video reconstruction of the prosecution’s crash, which showed Mark and Jacob being hit by Grossman’s white Mercedes.

“No science can ever support that,” Buzbee said.

He accused police of “taking the easy way out” and focusing the blame on Grossman in a “rush to judgment.”

Buzbee called the police investigation into the crash “absolutely terrible,” adding that “there is not nearly 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,” he said.

Buzbee argued that the crosswalk in Westlake Village where the boys were killed is “dangerous” and “improperly marked.”

And he also claimed that Mark and Jacob were not actually in the crosswalk, but 50 feet north of it when they were hit.

He refuted the prosecutor’s claim that Grossman tried to “fle the scene.”

And Buzbee said witnesses would report hearing two impacts, adding that while prosecutors “suggest one vehicle did that, that is scientifically impossible.”

He also said he plans to present expert witnesses who will say Grossman was driving only 50 miles per hour — not the 80 miles per hour prosecutors are claiming.

He said her lover Scott Erickson’s car, which was ahead 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 her attorneys, Mark Thiessen told the jury, “That’s simply not true.”

He called the police investigation “a muddle” and labeled the roadside sobriety and breathalyzer tests given to Grossman as “mismanagement.”

Thiessen argued that she was “polite, coherent and cooperative” with police on the scene and that she had “no loss of mental or physical 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.”

However, Gould told the jury that Grossman had half a margarita at a friend’s house earlier in the day, and then a full margarita with Erickson at Julio’s in Westlake Village before they decided to drive to her house to attend a presidential debate between Biden and Trump to watch. on TV.

A witness who saw Grossman and Erickson after Julio’s, racing before the crash, recalled thinking, “They’re going to kill someone, the way they’re going,” Gould said.

After the horrific crash, he said, the boys’ mother, Nancy Iskander, could see Jacob lying in the road, but she couldn’t see Mark because he had been hit and thrown so far away.

“At the speed that Ms. Grossman was going, he (Mark) was projected 250 feet away,” Gould said.

“And she didn’t stop… she continued down the road.

“Mark died of traumatic blunt force injuries. Jacob was beheaded internally; the force of the impact severed his spinal cord internally.’

Gould told the court that the black box in Grossman’s Mercedes indicated she was “on the ground” moments before the crash and was traveling at 80 mph in a 45 mph neighborhood.

“If she had been going 45 miles per hour, she wouldn’t have hit Mark and Jacob,” Gould said.

Grossman faces a maximum sentence of 34 years to life in prison if convicted.