{"id":238380,"date":"2026-05-20T19:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238380\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T19:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:24:08","slug":"brooklyn-mom-gets-20-years-to-life-in-kids-drowning-deaths-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238380\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn mom gets 20 years to life in kids’ drowning deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman who pleaded guilty to drowning her three children<\/a> in the waters off Coney Island has been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, prosecutors said Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Erin Merdy, 34, drowned 7-year-old Zachary Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephens Merdy and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev in the ocean after bringing them to the beach in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, the Brooklyn district attorney\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

A woman who pleaded guilty to\u00a0drowning her three children\u00a0in the waters off Coney Island has been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison, prosecutors say
\n
Erin Merdy, 34, drowned 7-year-old Zachary Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephens Merdy and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev in the early hours of Sept. 12, 2022, according to prosecutors
\n
Merdy pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in March of this year<\/p>\n

After Merdy left them, prosecutors said she walked toward an apartment that belonged to Oliver\u2019s father. She called family members in distress as she walked to the apartment, the DA’s office said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oliver\u2019s father and her relatives called 911 and began searching for Merdy after she refused to say where her children were, according to prosecutors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Police officers found the children on the shoreline of the beach a few hours later, the DA\u2019s office said. They were pronounced dead at NYC Health + Hospitals\/Coney Island.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Merdy told family members who found her “wet and barefoot” in Brighton Beach that the children were \u201cgone\u201d and that she was sorry.<\/p>\n

Merdy pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder in March of this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cZachary, Liliana and Oliver were innocent children whose lives were taken in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way,\u201d Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement Wednesday. \u201cNo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who pleaded guilty to drowning her three children in the waters off Coney Island has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[10015,387,25,98,100,99,303,9,24,12,63,308,380,27],"class_list":["post-238380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-crime","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-crime","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}