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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, 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.
“We sought the strongest possible accountability in this devastating case, and while nothing can bring these children back, this sentence ensures the defendant will be held responsible for taking their lives,” he added.
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Gonzalez said the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”
The children were found the morning of Sept. 12, 2022, after one of Merdy’s relatives called 911 expressing concern the children might be in danger.
Prosecutors said Merdy left the beach around 1:25 a.m. and began walking toward the apartment of the father of her youngest child.
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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 she was sorry.
The children’s bodies were recovered hours later along the shoreline just steps from the boardwalk.
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The city medical examiner ruled the deaths 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 reached out to her yesterday and she said she was doing laundry and I said I wanted to speak 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.