Fate of Rebecca Grossman, accused of running down 2 boys, now in jury’s hands

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The murder trial of Rebecca Grossman, a wealthy west San Fernando woman accused of hitting and killing two young boys with her car, came to a close Thursday with the prosecutors offering rebuttal argument to the jury.

Grossman's defense attorney, Tony Buzbee, has sought time and again to blame the death of the two boys, 11-year-old Mark Iskander and his 8-year-old brother Jacob, on Grossman's then-boyfriend Scott Erickson, a former professional baseball player. Grossman and Erickson had been drinking margaritas at a nearby Mexican restaurant, were driving to her home, and were, by most accounts, racing, driving their Mercedes SUVs at high speeds and weaving between lanes.

"Where is Scott Erickson?" Buzbee told the jury during his closing arguments Wednesday. "Where is the guy? If I was accused of murdering and killing those two kids, I’d be beating the courthouse door down. Where is he?"

On Thursday, Deputy District Attorney Ryan Gould responded: "At the end of the day, this isn’t the Scott Erickson trial. This is the Rebecca Grossman trial."

The defense has tried to convince the jury that Erickson's black SUV struck the children first, and that Grossman's white SUV struck them second. According to this theory, the first boy was left standing, perhaps spinning, in the road; the second was "vaulted" into the air and landed on the hood of Grossman's car before being thrown forward.

Gould called that theory "physically, mathematically impossible."

The front of Grossman's car was left badly damaged, and her airbag had gone off, causing the vehicle to shut down. Investigators linked pieces of debris left at the scene of the crash to Grossman's car.

Erickson, according Grossman's lawyers, owns two black Mercedes SUVs that share one license plate — a felony if true. The rouse, Buzbee argued, meant that investigators never got a chance to examine the car Erickson was driving. But the attorneys could offer little in the way of evidence to support their theory.

"There’s not one shred of evidence that links the black SUV with hitting the children," Gould told the jury.

He added: "I’m not saying it happened, but even it the black SUV hit Mark and Jacob first, that doesn’t absolve Ms. Grossman," arguing that the second collision would still be a "substantial factor" in the death of at least one of the boys. "It’s not how it happened, but if you believe it is, she’s still guilty."

Grossman is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of hit-and-run, since she only came to a stop when the safety feature disabled the car. In order to prove the murder charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 34 years in prison, prosecutors must prove that Grossman acted with "implied malice," that she knew what she was doing was endangering a human life. To prove vehicular manslaughter, they only have to prove that she acted with "gross negligence."

The jury began deliberating shortly after Gould's rebuttal ended.

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