A Los Angeles socialite was given a 15–life jail sentence for her actions after striking two young boys with her car, resulting in their deaths.
Prior to the judge’s issuance of the sentence, Rebecca Grossman begged him to “consider her suffering.”
The 60-year-old Grossman declared she was “not a murderer” and described the suffering she inflicted on her family as well as the families of the two children who died as “punishments I already endure.”
Following a six-week trial, she was found guilty on two charges of second-degree murder in connection with the murders of Mark Iskander, 11, and his brother, Jacob Iskander, 8. During a court hearing on Monday, she found out she would be going to prison.
Grossman and her partner, former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Scott Erickson, were playing a “high-speed game of chicken.” Before the incident, the two were enjoying cocktails at a nearby bar.
“I am not a murderer, and I ask you to recognize that true fact,” Grossman wrote in the letter to Superior Court Judge Joseph Brandolino.
“My pain, my recognition of the pain the Iskanders suffer, and the pain I watch my family endure, are punishments that I already suffer and will for the rest of my life. Please consider this suffering when you consider what more punishment to impose on me in this case.”
“I can only imagine the pain that (the boys’ parents) Nancy and Karim Iskander feel minute by minute,” Grossman stated. “I will carry my pain for the rest of my life.”
In an odd letter to the Iskanders, the socialite stated that, had she had the opportunity, she would have avoided the tragedy by driving her car “into a tree.”
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In spite of her assertions, the boy’s mother Nancy Iskander claimed the socialite had repeatedly pushed to postpone the boy’s sentence, treating her family as “the number one enemy in the world.”
Iskander said that the socialite had postponed the hearing, which was originally set on April 10, using a number of “strategies,” one of which was generating conflicts of interest.
“The issue became that every time we try and move on and move on to that next step, the legal system or Ms Grossman, or both, take us back into the fight, back to the fight for justice,” Ms Iskander stated.
“It’s horrific to say the least. She has not expressed remorse but more importantly, she has not even shown mercy… I felt that she had many opportunities to show mercy, plead guilty or figure out a way to just shorten the process of the fight, and not having to take me back again and again into that courtroom.”
“But she didn’t. She’s had many opportunities to show mercy and she did not show any mercy on my family, in fact, she only shows hate… as if we’re as if we’re number one enemy in the world.
