192

California socialite Rebecca Grossman sentenced to 15 to life for killing 2 kids in crosswalk (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 4 months ago by bazmatazable@reddthat.com to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16402340

California socialite Rebecca Grossman sentenced to 15 to life for killing 2 kids in crosswalk

A wealthy California woman who co-founded a burn center foundation in the Los Angeles area was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison Monday for the hit-and-run killings of two children while they were in a crosswalk more than three years ago.

Rebecca Grossman was speeding when she struck and killed Mark Iskander, 11, and his brother Jacob, 8, while they were in a crosswalk in the Los Angeles-area city of Westlake Village on Sept. 29, 2020.

“The loss of these two innocent lives has devastated their family and our community. Ms. Grossman’s blatant disregard for human life is a stark reminder of the grave consequences of irresponsible behavior behind the wheel,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said in a statement.

A jury convicted Grossman in February on two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and one count of hit-and-run driving resulting in death.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[+] danielquinn@lemmy.ca -30 points 4 months ago

Congratulations, you've put an old woman behind bars. Who wants to bet that they haven't fixed the street design in the last 4 years to actually prevent this from happening again? Are we to assume that prison is a deterrent here?

I mean, sure, she killed two kids, she should go to jail, but any street design that would permit the sort of driving that makes killing those kids accidentally is more at fault than the unlucky idiot behind the wheel.

[-] RidgeDweller@sh.itjust.works 20 points 4 months ago

More at fault... are you serious?

This happened at a residential intersection with easily visible traffic lights and straight roads. This road looks hardly hazardous under normal traffic conditions.

She was going almost double the speed limit while likely impaired by alcohol. She is well beyond an unlucky idiot.

[-] danielquinn@lemmy.ca -2 points 4 months ago

I'm not saying that she's blameless, rather that a design of straight roads and traffic lights ensured that this was going to happen. If it wasn't an old lady speeding, it would have been a dumb teen on their phone, or a middle-aged man "trying to catch the yellow". If the road allows for dangerous driving, kids are going to die on it.

[-] graymess@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

It's weird how much I disagree or agree with different parts of this statement.

She deserves her sentence. She should never be allowed to drive again for running over two children at twice the speed limit, trying to drive away with their blood all over her car as they die on the street. I don't believe in prison as punishment in general, but she had her chance and turned a mistake into a double homicide. I think a better and much funnier sentence would be only being allowed to use the Metro for the rest of her life.
Yes, the street design is a problem and you're absolutely correct that if a street allows drivers to go 80 mph, some inevitably will. This can and should be resolved. Narrow the road, add an island, sidewalk curb extensions, there are many options and any could have naturally slowed this maniac of a driver down to a speed where being struck isn't an immediate death sentence.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 4 months ago

You're right, but it's going to take time to fix America's roads. Right now the prosecution of people who fail to follow the road rules and cause death and injury will have to do as an example that may make the next reckless person hopefully think twice

this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024

192 points (96.6% liked)

Fuck Cars

9580 readers

43 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be Civil

You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speech

Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass people

Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topic

This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No reposts

Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

[meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
[article] for news articles
[blog] for any blog-style content
[video] for video resources
[academic] for academic studies and sources
[discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
[meme] for memes
[image] for any non-meme images
[misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories

Recommended communities:

!yimby@lemmy.world

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

ConfidentLonely@lemmy.world

Fried_out_Kombi@lemmy.world

toaster@slrpnk.net