Nancy Iskander answered the phone when Jennifer Nagel called on Sept. 30, 2020.
Hours earlier, Iskander’s sons Mark, 11, and Jacob, 8, had been struck and killed on a Westlake Village street. But at that moment, Nagel had no idea what happened. She heard there had been an accident from a friend who told her that Mark may have been involved. Nagel immediately called Nancy, she said, testifying in a wrongful death trial this week.
“She said, ‘Jenny, they’re gone,’” Nagel said Iskander told her on the phone that morning. “Jacob and Mark are gone.”
As they spoke, Iskander’s voice kept breaking, said Nagel, on the witness stand in a Van Nuys courtroom on May 5. She described her friend as almost hysterical but trying to hold it together.
“One minute they were there, and the next minute they were gone,'” Iskander told her, she said.
In 2024, a jury found Rebecca Grossman, of Hidden Hills, guilty of two counts of second-degree murder and hit-and-run driving. Grossman, co-founder of the Grossman Burn Foundation and wife of plastic surgeon Dr. Peter Grossman, was driving 73 mph in a 45-mph zone when the Iskander brothers were struck and killed, experts testified.
The boys were crossing Triunfo Canyon Road with their mom and younger brother, but Mark and Jacob never made it to the other side.
The Iskander family brought the wrongful death suit against Grossman and Scott Erickson, Grossman’s then-boyfriend and a former Major League Baseball player, who also was on the road. The two were driving in separate SUVs to Grossman’s home near Westlake Lake.
Grossman, now 62 and in state prison, was sentenced to 15 years to life. She appealed, and a state appellate court upheld her murder conviction in March. She has since petitioned the California Supreme Court to review her case.
Erickson was charged with misdemeanor reckless driving in 2021. The court ordered judicial diversion, and the case was later resolved, officials said.
What happened after the fatal crash?
Nagel met the Iskanders when the family came to check out the small Thousand Oaks campus at Ascension Lutheran School. Nagel’s oldest and Mark were about to start second grade that year. They quickly became best friends.
“They were very close. They talked every day,” Nagel said.
In the weeks and months after the crash, she testified that the Iskanders struggled. They couldn’t be in the home because of the memories. But they couldn’t be out of the home, because then they weren’t close enough to the boys, she said.
At times, Nagel would be talking to Nancy and would see something change in her friend’s eyes.
“In the beginning, I could tell she was seeing the accident again,” Nagel said. “I could see the horror on her face, and then, she would start crying.”
Sometime later, Nagel thought – or, she hoped, she said – that Nancy stopped seeing the accident replay in her mind.
“I think she just remembers the boys,” Nagel said. “She’ll start crying.”
What happened the night of the crash?
Before the crash, Grossman, Erickson and Erickson’s longtime friend had met for drinks.
The three then planned to meet up at Grossman’s house by the lake to watch the presidential debate, the friend, Royce Clayton, testified. Erickson and Grossman drove separately, with Grossman in a white Mercedes SUV. Clayton, also a former MLB player, stopped at a store.
The Iskanders were in the crosswalk when witnesses said they saw and heard vehicles speeding toward them. The black SUV, reportedly driven by Erickson, reached the crosswalk first.
The boys’ mom, Nancy Iskander, grabbed her youngest son, the closest to her, and dove out of the path of the vehicle, she has said. She looked up and saw the white SUV pass the spot where Mark and Jacob had been.
Mark likely died within minutes if not seconds of being struck, experts have testified. Paramedics took Jacob to Los Robles Regional Medical Center in Thousand Oaks where he was later pronounced dead.
‘I fell to the ground’
Chamie Delkeskamp, an associate pastor at Ascension Lutheran church and school in Thousand Oaks, said she was the only person in the sanctuary when Nagel called her the morning after the crash.
“I fell to the ground,” Delkeskamp said of hearing about the boys.
Jacob was a student at the campus at that time. Mark, at Oaks Christian in September 2020, had gone to the school from second through fifth grade. Delkeskamp described the Iskander family as “very close.” For parents Nancy and Karim, their children were the center of their world, she said.
“They won’t ever be the same,” she testified on May 8. “Every day, every single day, it hurts.”
She told jurors about the boys, describing Jacob as a ray of light. He was smart, a good friend and loved being outdoors. Mark noticed people and told “hysterical” jokes, Delkeskamp said. He was a motivated student and excelled in math. He was sunshine when he came into a room, the pastor said.
At times as she testified, photos of the boys or a school assignment was projected on monitors in the courtroom. In one, Mark had described himself. He wrote that he loved to skateboard, felt happy playing ice hockey and needed family, friends and God.
He was someone who shares time, fears death and would like to travel to Australia, Delkeskamp read aloud, in the courtroom. Someone “who dreams of becoming a great doctor, skateboarder, mathematician and sleeper.”
Cheri Carlson is a reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at cheri.carlson@vcstar.com.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Iskander friend describes crash aftermath as Grossman trial continues
Reporting by Cheri Carlson, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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