The mother of two children who died when they were hit in a Westlake Village crosswalk gave tearful testimony about the final moments of her children's lives during a civil trial against the drivers of cars that sped through that intersection.
Nancy Iskander told jurors she was crossing a street with her three children when she was forced to grab her youngest son and dive to avoid being hit by a black Mercedes van. But then, he said, he saw his two oldest children disappear as a white Mercedes sped through the crosswalk.
“I was crossing the street. I wasn't crossing the racetrack,” he testified Tuesday in the civil wrongful death trial of his son's convicted murderer, Rebecca Grossman, and former Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson. The lawsuit seeks $100 million from Grossman, Erickson and their insurance companies.
In 2024, Grossman was convicted of murder during a trial in which experts said she drove up to 81 mph and traveled a quarter-mile after crashing into the children before her car shut off. She is serving a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
At the civil trial, Iskander recalled the horror of losing her sons Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8, on Sept. 29, 2020, as they walked near a private lake and two Mercedes vans sped down the street.
Iskander said she saw a black sport utility vehicle “roaring” toward the Westlake Village intersection where she and her three children were crossing. She said she grabbed her 5-year-old son, Zachary, and pulled him to safety as the pickup truck driven by Erickson crossed the marked crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road.
“I still see that bumper,” he said. “I see it in my nightmares.” The black car drove through the marked crosswalk at “incredible speed,” he said.
But another SUV, a white Mercedes driven by Grossman, was following closely behind, Iskander said. His older children were near the median, one on a skateboard and the other on roller blades, as the two cars apparently accelerated and descended on them, he said.
“The white car passed exactly where Mark and Jacob were, and then I looked back and couldn't find them, and I started screaming,” he testified.
“I went down the road and saw Mark, he had blood coming out of his mouth and he wasn't wearing shoes,” she said. “I realized he was devastated and I realized he died… I just knew, I don't know how, as a mother.”
Then he found Jacob. “It looked like Jacob was asleep,” he recalled. “I kept thinking there's no way God is going to take them both.” Iskander, a trained pharmacist, checked and listened to her heartbeat. For a second she was alone, as none of the cars stopped, she added.
“I was in absolute shock,” he recalled. When the paramedics arrived, they covered Mark with a sheet and began performing CPR on Jacob. Paramedics transported the younger child to Los Robles Medical Center. She and her husband, Karim, followed her in a police car.
Mark, left, and Jacob Iskander.
(Iskander family)
“If you make it, you will be paralyzed from the neck down,” a doctor told them. “They separated his spinal cord from his head. They took us to say goodbye to him. I told him I was proud of him and that I loved him.”
Iskander recalled seeing Grossman in the emergency room, handcuffed. “She knew who I was because she looked at me,” he testified. “She just looked me in the eyes… I was surprised by her age.” He added: “I had imagined he must have been a teenager to drive that way.”
According to testimony, Erickson and Grossman were drinking margaritas at a local bar before getting into their respective vehicles and heading to Grossman's home to watch a presidential debate.
Sheriff's investigators testified that Grossman was driving more than 70 mph when he hit the children. But Erickson, in his testimony last week, insisted that while he was traveling in front of her, he was going about 50 mph. The civil complaint accuses the couple of jogging that day, but Erickson told the jury they did not.
Rebecca Grossman, with her daughter, heads to the Van Nuys courthouse in 2024. Grossman is serving a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Erickson testified that he missed the two brothers but never saw what happened in the rearview mirror. He testified that he was on the phone with Grossman after the accident and asked him, “Did you see the boys?”
Grossman responded, “The guys…” and hung up, Erickson told jurors. During the criminal trial, Grossman's attorneys argued that it was the retired pitcher's truck that struck the children first, throwing them into their client's path. Still, jurors convicted Grossman of the deaths.
Iskander, on the witness stand Tuesday, echoed his attorney Brian Panish, who vowed to prove that the pitcher and his then-girlfriend were both guilty because they were running on the residential street.
“I relive that day every day,” he said. “I'm sure I'm a devastated mother. A part of me died with them.” Her husband kept the rooms in their Westlake Village home the same way. The couple now lives in Massachusetts.
“No parent wants to forget their child,” he explained. “Because it is flesh and blood and what is more important than life.”
Iskander became emotional as she described her last Mother's Day.
“This year was extremely difficult… My daughter, who is 7, made me a card at school,” she said. “She put a pink heart and on it she said 'Mark and Jacob. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.'” “It just hit really hard.”
