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…
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