Brooklyn mom who drowned 3 kids on Coney Island beach sentenced to 20 years to life

NEW YORK (AP) — A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on Wednesday for drowning her three young children in the ocean near Coney Island’s famed boardwalk.

Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 killing of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 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 grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement. He added that the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”

A message left with Merdy’s attorney was not returned.

The frantic search for the three children began in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, after New York City police received a call from Merdy’s relatives, concerned that she intended to harm her kids.

Officers first found the mother, barefoot and soaking wet, 2 miles (3 kilometers) down the boardwalk from the section of Coney Island where she lived. She repeatedly said that the children were gone and that she was sorry, according to prosecutors.

Hours later, the bodies of the children were recovered from the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean, steps from the boardwalk and about a dozen blocks from the stadium where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team plays.

The city medical examiner’s office ruled their deaths homicides by drowning.

The evidence against Merdy included video showing her walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m., according to the criminal complaint.

At the time, relatives said she may have been going through postpartum depression.