A 34-year-old Brooklyn mother received a sentence of 20 years to life in prison Wednesday after killing her three young children by drowning them in ocean waters off Coney Island’s well-known boardwalk.
Erin Merdy had entered guilty pleas earlier this year to charges of first-degree murder in connection with the 2022 deaths of her children: 7-year-old son Zachary, 4-year-old daughter Liliana, and 3-month-old son Oliver.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez released a statement saying “No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever.” He described the children’s deaths as occurring “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
Attempts to reach Merdy’s legal representative for comment were unsuccessful.
The urgent hunt for the three children started during the early morning hours of Sept. 12, 2022, when New York City police got a phone call from family members who were worried that Merdy planned to hurt her children.
Police located the mother first, found without shoes and completely drenched, about 2 miles away on the boardwalk from where she resided in the Coney Island area. According to prosecutors, she kept stating that her children were gone and expressing remorse.
Several hours afterward, authorities pulled the children’s bodies from the Atlantic Ocean shoreline, located just steps away from the boardwalk and roughly a dozen blocks from where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team has their stadium.
The city’s medical examiner determined the deaths were homicides caused by drowning.
Prosecutors said surveillance footage captured Merdy walking with her children toward the water shortly before 1 a.m., which served as evidence in the case.
Family members indicated at the time that she might have been experiencing postpartum depression.
