The mother of two boys killed when they were hit in a Westlake Village crosswalk gave tearful testimony about the last moments of her sons’ lives during a civil trial against the drivers of the cars that raced through that intersection.
Nancy Iskander told jurors that she was crossing a road with her three sons when she was forced to grab her youngest son and dive to avoid being hit by a black Mercedes SUV. But then, she said, she saw her two older sons disappear as a white speeding Mercedes plowed through the crosswalk.
“I was crossing the road. I was not crossing the racetrack,” she testified Tuesday in the civil wrongful death trial against her son’s convicted killer, 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 where experts said she was driving up to 81 mph and traveled a quarter of a mile after slamming into the children before her car shut down. She is currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life.
At the civil trial, Iskander recalled the horror of losing her sons Mark,11, and Jacob, 8, on Sept. 29, 2020, as they were walking near a private lake and two Mercedes SUVs came speeding down the street.
Iskander said she saw a black sport utility vehicle “roaring” toward the Westlake Village intersection where she and her three sons were crossing. She said she grabbed her 5-year-old, Zachary, pulling him to safety as the SUV driven by Erickson barreled through the marked crosswalk on Triunfo Canyon Road.
“I still see that bumper,” she said. “I see it in my nightmares.” The black car passed through the marked crosswalk at “insane speed,” she said.
But another SUV — a white Mercedes driven by Grossman — following closely behind, Iskander said. Her older sons were close to the median, one on a skateboard and the other on skates, as the two cars seemingly accelerated and descended on them, she said.
“The white car passed exactly where Mark and Jacob were, and then I looked back and didn’t find them, and I started screaming,” she testified.
“I went down the road, and I saw Mark; he had blood coming out of his mouth, and his shoes weren’t on him,” she said. “I could tell he was all broken, and I could tell he died. … I just knew, I don’t know how, as a mother.”
She then found Jacob. “Jacob looked as if he was asleep,” she recalled. “I kept thinking there’s no way God will take them both.” A trained pharmacist, Iskander checked and heard his beating heart. For a second, she was alone, as neither car stopped, she added.
“I was in absolute shock,” she recalled. When paramedics arrived, they covered Mark with a sheet and began CPR on Jacob. Paramedics rushed the younger boy to Los Robles Medical Center. She and her husband, Karim, followed in a police car.
“If he makes it, he will be paralyzed from the neck down,” a doctor told them. “His spinal cord was separated from his head. They took us to say goodbye to him. I told him I was proud of him and I loved him.”
Iskander recalled seeing Grossman in the emergency room, wearing handcuffs. “She knew who I was because she looked at me,” she testified. “She just looked me in the eye. … I was shocked, like, her age.” She added, “I had imagined it must have been a teenager to drive that way.”
According to testimony, Erickson and Grossman were drinking margaritas at a local cantina before they got into their respective vehicles and headed to Grossman’s home to watch a presidential debate.
Sheriff’s investigators testified Grossman was driving at more than 70 mph when she hit the boys. But Erickson, in testimony last week, insisted that, while he was traveling in front of her, he was doing about 50 mph. The civil complaint accuses the pair of racing that day, but Erickson told jurors they were not.
Erickson testified that he missed the two brothers but never saw what happened in his rear-view mirror. Erickson testified he was on the phone with Grossman after the collision and asked, “Did you see the boys?”
Grossman replied, “The boys …” and hung up, Erickson told jurors. During the criminal trial, Grossman’s lawyers alleged that it was the retired pitcher’s SUV that hit the boys first, tossing them into their client’s path. Still, the jurors convicted Grossman for the deaths.
Nancy Iskander, on the witness stand on Tuesday, echoed her attorney Brian Panish, who promised to show the pitcher and his then-girlfriend were both culpable because they were racing on the residential street.
“I relive that day every day,” she said. “I am a broken mother for sure. Part of me died with them.” Her husband kept the bedrooms of their Westlake Village home the same way. The couple are now living in Massachusetts.
“No parent wants to forget their kid,” she explained. “Because it is flesh and blood and what is more important than life.”
Iskander became very emotional as she described her last Mother’s Day.
“This year was extremely hard. … My daughter, who is 7, made me a card at school,” she said. “She put a pink heart, and she put in it ‘Mark and Jacob. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.’ It just hit really hard.”
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