US

Mom Charged With Murder After Her Three Children Drowned At Coney Island

[Screenshot/Public/YouTube/CBS New York]

Nicole Silverio Media Reporter
Font Size:

The New York Police Department (NYPD) on Wednesday arrested and charged a mother accused of drowning her three young children on Coney Island.

Erin Merdy, 30, is charged with second-degree murder, three counts of depraved indifference to human life and three counts of murder in connection to the deaths of 7-year-old Zachary Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stepehn and 3-month-old baby girl Oliver Bodnarev, according to CNN. The medical examiner’s office ruled the children’s deaths to be a homicide Tuesday.

Merdy told investigators she had been “dreaming of walking the kids in the water,” CNN reported.

NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey announced at a Monday press conference that authorities received a call from a concerned relative at around 1:40 a.m., who believed Merdy may have harmed her children, according to CNN. The father of one of the children met with authorities and expressed similar concerns. (RELATED: 3 Children Die After Being Found Unconscious At Coney Island)

Police found Merdy at Brighton 6th Street unaccompanied by the children, Corey said. Authorities discovered the children’s remains at 4:42 a.m. at the water’s edge on West 35th Street. Inspector James King, the 60th Precinct’s commanding officer, said the mother was soaking wet and unresponsive to the officers. They took Merdy to the station house during the preliminary parts of the investigation.

Police attempted to conduct life saving measures on the children and rushed them to Coney Island Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, he said in the press conference.

The 7-year-old loved football, superheroes and the character Sonic the Hedgehog, and the 4-year-old loved to play with dolls, his father, Derrick, told CNN. The mother reportedly pulled Zachary out of football in March.

“You could see that there was a lot going on,” Allen McFarland, a youth football coach, told the outlet. “[Merdy] would say, ‘No, I know he likes it and we’re going to try to come back, but the schedule has just been busy. It seemed like she was juggling a lot.”

Nicole Silverio

Follow Nicole Silverio on Twitter @NicoleMSilverio

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel