A judge on Monday sentenced a California philanthropist to 15 years to life in prison for murdering two children in a hit-and-run collision in a crosswalk while she was driving a Mercedes sport utility vehicle at more than 80 miles an hour, prosecutors said.
The woman, Rebecca Grossman, 60, of Hidden Hills, Calif., west of Los Angeles, was convicted in February of two counts of murder, two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter and one count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death, prosecutors said.
Evidence presented at Ms. Grossman’s trial indicated that she had accelerated to 81 miles per hour from 73 m.p.h. just two seconds before she hit the two children, Mark Iskander, 11, and his brother, Jacob, 8, in a 45-m.p.h. zone in Westlake Village, Calif., on the evening of Sept. 29, 2020, Los Angeles County prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
Witness testimony indicated that before the crash Ms. Grossman “appeared to be racing” another Mercedes S.U.V. that was being driven by her boyfriend at the time, Scott Erickson, a former pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, prosecutors wrote in the memorandum. Ms. Grossman was “at a bare minimum, ‘playing’ with him, in a deadly game of chase,” prosecutors wrote.
Ms. Grossman also drank alcohol and took Valium before driving “to the point that she was impaired,” the memorandum said.
Her blood alcohol content on two preliminary screenings was .075 percent and .076 percent, just under the legal limit of .08 percent, and on subsequent tests measured at .08 percent, .073 percent and .074 percent, the memorandum stated.