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A Brooklyn woman who drowned her three children in the Atlantic Ocean near the famous Coney Island 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 child, a four-year-old child, and a three-month-old baby, or the pain their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
“We seek the greatest possible accountability in this devastating case, and while nothing can bring these children back, this sentence ensures that the defendant will be responsible for taking their lives,” he added.
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NYPD investigators examine a stretch of beach at Coney Island where three children were found dead in the surf, on September 12, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Joseph Frederick)
Gonzalez said the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
The children were found on September morning. On January 12, 2022, after one of Merdy’s relatives called 911 expressing concern that the children may be in danger.
Prosecutors said Merdy left the beach around 1:25 a.m. and began walking toward the apartment of her youngest son’s father.
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The children of Erin Merdy, 30, were found unconscious near the shore of Coney Island Beach during a frantic overnight search early 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 discovered.
According to prosecutors, Merdy repeatedly said the children were gone and that he was sorry.
The children’s bodies were recovered hours later along the coast, just steps from the boardwalk.
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A Brooklyn woman was 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 to be homicides caused by drowning.
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 struggled with mental health issues and may have been experiencing postpartum depression.
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“I contacted her yesterday and she told me she was doing laundry and I told her I wanted to talk to the kids,” Jacqueline Scott, 56, told the outlet. “I tried to call her twice on the phone after that and there was no answer.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.