Brooklyn mom who drowned 3 children in ocean near Coney Island sentenced
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A Brooklyn woman who drowned her three children in the Atlantic Ocean near Coney Island’s famous boardwalk will spend decades behind bars.
Erin Merdy, 34, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 deaths of her 7-year-old son Zachary, 4-year-old daughter Liliana and 3-month-old son Oliver.
“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby or the pain their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. he said.
“We sought the strongest possible accountability in this devastating case, and while nothing can bring these children back, this sentence ensures the defendant is held accountable for taking their lives,” he added.
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New York Police investigators examine a beach on Coney Island, New York, where three children were found dead in the surf on September 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Joseph Frederick)
Gonzalez said the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
The children were found on the morning of September 12, 2022, after one of Merdy’s relatives called 911 expressing concern that the children might be in danger.
Prosecutors said Merdy left the beach around 1:25 a.m. and began walking toward her youngest child’s father’s house.
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The children of 30-year-old Erin Merdy were found unconscious near the Coney Island Beach shoreline during a frantic overnight search in the early hours of Monday, September 12, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Authorities later found Merdy barefoot and soaking wet about two miles from where the children were found.
Merdy repeatedly said the children were gone and that he was sorry, according to prosecutors.
The children’s bodies were found hours later on the shoreline, just feet away from the boardwalk.
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A Brooklyn woman has been sentenced to decades in prison in connection with the drowning deaths of her three children. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The city medical examiner ruled the deaths as homicides by asphyxiation.
Prosecutors said surveillance video showed Merdy walking toward the ocean with the children shortly before 1 a.m.
Merdy’s mother told the New York Daily News at the time that her daughter had recently been struggling with mental health issues and may have been experiencing postpartum depression.
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“I reached out to her yesterday and she said she was doing laundry, so I said I wanted to talk to the kids,” 56-year-old Jacqueline Scott told the press. “After this incident, I tried to call him on the phone twice, but there was no answer.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
