The New York mom who confessed to drowning her three young children on Coney Island beach has been charged with murder in connection with their deaths, police said Wednesday.
30-year-old Erin Merdy was charged with intentional murder, murder with depraved indifference and murder of a victim less than 11 years old, cops said.
She’s facing nine counts in total — three for each of her children, 7-year-old Zachary Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephen and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev, police said.
Merdy has been hospitalized at NYU Langone Brooklyn’s psychiatric ward since late Monday morning and it’s unclear when she’ll be arraigned on the charges. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office was unable to provide a timeline.
In the wee hours of Monday, Merdy was captured on surveillance footage walking from her Neptune Avenue apartment to the Coney Island boardwalk with her three children in tow. She was captured soon after leaving the area without her kids.
The mom, who family said had mental health issues and may have been suffering from postpartum depression, later confessed to her relatives that she had drowned her children, law enforcement sources said previously.
Prior to the tragedy, Merdy had been acting strangely and made comments to her relatives that left them concerned that she’d harmed her children.
Some of those relatives called police and asked them to conduct a wellness check at her home, but when officers arrived, the door was unlocked and nobody was there, setting off a frantic manhunt for the mom and her kids.
Just after 3 a.m., police found Merdy near the Brighton Beach boardwalk, soaking wet, barefoot and walking through the sand in a bathrobe. She appeared dazed and didn’t respond to questions, and her children were nowhere to be found.
The NYPD’s harbor and aviation unit scoured the sand and sea for the three kids, and at 4:40 a.m., made the gut-wrenching discovery of their lifeless bodies on the shoreline near West 35th Street, just three blocks from their home.
They were taken to Coney Island Hospital but could not be saved.
Merdy had at least two reports of neglect filed against her with the city Administration for Children’s Services for failing to bring the kids to school, but the disposition of the reports is unclear, law enforcement sources said previously.
Little Zachary’s father, Derrick Merdy, an air traffic controller in Virginia, told the New York Times his son was often dirty and hungry when he showed up for mandated custody visits.
He told the outlet he reported the mom to “child protective services” and attempted to get full custody of their son, to no avail. It’s not clear to which agency the father reported the mother.
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