statement<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n\n Merdy\u2019s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cZachary, Liliana and Oliver were innocent children whose lives were taken in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way,\u201d Gonzalez said in the statement.\n <\/p>\n
\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\n <\/p>\n
\n Prosecutors said Merdy took the children to the beach about 12:37 a.m. that night nearly four years ago and drowned them. At about 1:25 a.m., she walked from the beach toward the apartment of the father of the youngest child and called family members. She was upset and would not answer questions about where the children were, according to the statement. The father and family members went to look for her and called 911.\n <\/p>\n
\n At about 4:30 a.m. police found the children, unresponsive and wet, on the Coney Island shoreline, according to the statement. They were pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital. Prosecutors said family members found Merdy wet and barefoot in nearby Brighton Beach. She told them the children were gone and she was sorry.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary A New York mother who drowned her three young children at Coney Island was sentenced to 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-655637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}