![\"police](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/drowning-sentenced-coney-island.webp\")
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A Coney Island mother has been sentenced to prison for drowning her three children in Coney Island. <\/p>\n
File photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n
A Coney Island mom has been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for drowning her three children in the Atlantic Ocean in 2022.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Erin Merdy, 34, pleaded guilty in March to three counts of first-degree murder, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney\u2019s Office.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Just after midnight on September 12, 2022, Merdy brought her children \u2014 7-year-old Zachary Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephens Merdy, and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev to the beach on Coney Island, near 35th Street, and drowned them in the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"coney](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Photo-Sep-12-6-39-35-AM-scaled-1.jpg\")
Police on the beach in Coney Island after Merdy drowned her children in September 2022.. File photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n
She then walked barefoot toward Brighton Beach, according to the DA\u2019s office, and called her family members. When she could not answer questions about where her children were, relatives called 911 while her father went out to search for her.<\/p>\n
He eventually found her barefoot in Brighton Beach, per the investigation, and repeatedly told her father that the children were gone and that she was sorry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the time, police said they first went to Merdy\u2019s apartment, which was empty and unlocked.\u00a0 They eventually found the three children dead on the shoreline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Merdy was treated at a local hospital, then taken to the local precinct for questioning<\/a>. She was arrested<\/a> two days after the deaths.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cZachary, Liliana and Oliver were innocent children whose lives were taken in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way. 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,\u201d Gonzalez said. \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<\/p>\n Merdy was believed to be struggling with mental health issues<\/a>, possibly including postpartum depression and schizophrenia. She was put on psychiatric hold after her arrest, and her first arraignment in September 2022 was virtual, as she sat in her hospital bed. She and Zachary\u2019s father, Derrick Merdy, were involved in a custody battle, the New York Times<\/a> reported at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Derrick said Merdy would frequently drop Zachary off dirty and without enough clothes for a visit, he told the Times, and Zachary said she did not feed him enough. Derrick was seeking full custody of their son.\u00a0<\/p>\n At a 2022 vigil<\/a>, Allen MacFarland, who coached Zachary at a youth football program, remembered him as \u201cvery quiet\u201d but \u201cvery expressive in showing laughter, joy [or] smiling.\u201d At Liliana\u2019s funeral<\/a>, Pastor Hestor Williams said the 4-year-old \u201clit up a room.\u201d Her father, Shamir Small, told Brooklyn Paper at the time that he wanted Liliana to \u201calways be with me,\u201d and said Merdy \u201cloved her despite everything you heard going on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Coney Island mother has been sentenced to prison for drowning her three children in Coney Island. File…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,5531,100,99,10916,119,94154,419,94155,15343,5533,93288,94156,9,24,12,370,63,93466,646,8098,7222,93464],"class_list":["post-240919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-district-attorney","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-supreme-court","tag-coney-island","tag-coney-island-mom","tag-courts","tag-crie","tag-drowning","tag-eric-gonzalez","tag-erin-merdy","tag-liliana-stephens-merdy","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newsletter","tag-nyc","tag-oliver-bondarev","tag-police-and-fire","tag-prison","tag-sentenced","tag-zachary-merdy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240919","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=240919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"woman](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/DSC_4035-scaled.jpg\")
Mourners at Liliana\u2019s funeral in 2022. File photo by Lloyd Mitchell<\/p>\n