For months, Nancy Iskander has been coming to court hoping to get justice for her two young sons, who were struck and killed by philanthropist Rebecca Grossman in a Westlake Village crosswalk.
she offered Graphic, gut-wrenching testimony About seeing Grossman’s Mercedes speed toward the boys who were out on a family walk in their neighborhood. At his sentencing hearing Monday, he described how Grossman refused to apologize at the hospital that night.
Now, Iskandar says he is disappointed with how the case ultimately ended.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino on Monday Grossman sentenced Two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment, plus another concurrent sentence of three years for fleeing the scene of the fatal accident. This means Grossman will have to serve 15 years to life in prison. He was facing a sentence of 34 years to life.
“I think it was a stab to my heart that he treated these two sweet boys as one child,” Nancy Iskandar said, adding that she felt the sentences should have been consecutive, one for each of her sons. “These are two different lives. These are two boys, and they can’t be two of one.”
More than a dozen of Iskanders’ friends and family members appeared before the judge and described the pain they felt over Iskanders’ death. Mark, 11, And Jacob, 8and demand that Grossman receive a long prison sentence.
Co-founder of the Grossman Berne Foundation was convicted in February He was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and one count of hit-and-run in the September 2020 killings of two children.
“It doesn’t matter if he killed them a little. He killed them,” Iskandar said.
Prosecutors have repeatedly said Grossman shows no remorse for crimes.
But before sentencing on Monday, she stood in a Van Nuys courtroom to make one final plea to Iskandar.
However, when the grieving mother stood up to leave, Grossman urged her to stay.
“Please don’t go. I’ve waited almost four years to contact you.”
Iskandar sat back in his chair and lowered his head.
Kareem and Nancy Iskander greet supporters outside a Van Nuys courtroom on Monday.
(Brian Van Der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am,” she said in a raspy voice.
Grossman said she had been hoping to talk to Iskandar “parent to parent, mother to mother” for a long time.
“I’m so, so sorry,” she said. “My pain is nothing compared to your pain – not even a fraction.”
On Monday, Iskandar spoke before Grossman’s sentencing about the evening she arrived at the hospital after the accident. Mark died as a result of the collision, “Every bone in his body … was broken,” Iskander testified during Grossman’s trial. Jacob, 8, was fighting for his life in the emergency room.
Police had brought Grossman to the same hospital for treatment after the collision on Triunfo Canyon Road. The two women saw each other there.
“He looked me in the eye,” Iskandar said, her voice choked with emotion as she looked at Grossman across the courtroom. “That was your chance. You looked me in the eye. You knew they were dying.”
“He’s a coward,” Iskander said of Grossman.
Grossman and Iskander spent in court for six weeks during the murder trialBut this was the moment when the two could talk about what kind of punishment Grossman should receive.
In the end, the sentence did not satisfy prosecutors, who said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino said the punishment was not fair.
In court documents filed ahead of sentencing, the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office said Grossman “displayed a complete lack of remorse and self-reproach, which leads to only one conclusion, that he deserves no leniency whatsoever.”
However, Brandolino said that although Grossman’s behavior was “reckless and undoubtedly negligent,” he is “not the monster that prosecutors have painted him to be.”
Dr. Peter Grossman leaves the Van Nuys courthouse with their children Nick and Alexis after his wife, Rebecca Grossman, was sentenced Monday to 15 years to life in prison.
(Brian Van Der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Until Monday, Grossman had said little publicly about the matter.
Addressing Iskandar, she stressed that she was sorry, and said she wished it was she who had died, not the boys.
“If I could give my life right now and say to God, ‘Can you please bring Mark and Jacob back,’ I would ask God to take my life,” she said.
However, Iskander did not find Grossman’s feelings genuine. “Her crying yesterday seemed pretentious to me.”
Grossman’s family presented evidence to show her goodness. Her son Nick told the court: “My mother is not the bad person the media has portrayed her to be.”
But his comments did not impress the boys’ uncle, Sherif Iskander, who said Grossman had “tried to get away with murder.”
Nancy Iskander and her husband, Kareem, believe the sentencing also sends the wrong message about fleeing after an accident. By not handing out additional years of sentence for hit-and-run convictions, the judge is “telling people it’s OK to hit and run,” Iskander said. She and her husband are now Honoring her sons’ memory through a foundation Providing assistance to underprivileged children.
He said the sentence left him with huge disappointment in the justice system.
“Nobody has the right to kill someone and get away with it,” Iskandar said. “I am still waiting for the day when she will admit she did it.”
