A heart-wrenching plea from a 4-year-old girl, who was tragically drowned by her mother near Coney Island, emerged as she expressed her fear of returning home. Before her untimely death alongside her siblings, she confided in her father, telling him she was “scared to go back to mommy,” as he shared during the sentencing of his former partner.
Shamir Small, the father of Liliana Stephens Merdy, revealed the chilling words of his daughter, who was apprehensive about seeing her mother, Erin Merdy. With a heavy heart, Small recalled telling her, “I hope I see you again,” just before the tragic incident occurred in September 2022.
“The last thing Lily said to me and my mother — words that will haunt me forever — was ‘I’m scared to go back to mommy, and want to stay here with you and grandma,'” Small shared in an emotional victim impact statement.
Erin Merdy, now 34, received a sentence of 20 years to life in prison by Brooklyn Supreme Court after she confessed to drowning her three children — Zachary, 7; Liliana Stephens, 4; and Oliver Bondarev, just 3 months old — in the ocean near their Coney Island residence.
The horrific event was a result of Merdy’s ongoing battle with mental health issues, notably postpartum depression, which she claimed drove her actions on the night of September 12, 2022, a night she referred to as a “blur.”
“If I had to describe it, I was on autopilot,” Merdy recounted to the court, asserting that her memory of the night her children died was fragmented and unclear.
Merdy, who was remorseful for the drownings, also said that she “loved’ her kids — but had struggled with postpartum depression with all three of her kids, especially with her third baby, little 3-month-old Oliver.
“Their passing is not in vain. I have spent a lot of time on Rikers [Island] talking with other women with postpartum depression, and they have made me feel less alone,” the mom said.
Merdy’s rationale behind the murders didn’t sit well with relatives, particularly Jim Kobal, the uncle of the 3-month-old, who labeled Merdy as a monster who robbed them of joy and replaced it with a “lifetime of grief.”
“There will forever be a hole in our hearts because of this heinous monster,” Kobal said, before telling Merdy that there’s a “special place in hell” for her.
On the night of the drownings, concerned family members called police around 1 a.m. that morning to report that the mom might be drunk and worried that she had done something to harm her children.
Merdy was found by police walking barefoot through the sand on the Coney Island beach, wearing a bathrobe and appearing dazed.
Law enforcement sources said that hours before cops found her, she phoned relatives and admitted that she “drowned all three kids.”
The children were later found unresponsive along the shoreline, just three blocks from their home, and were pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital sometime later.
At the time of the killings, Merdy was facing eviction and owed more than $10,000 in back rent for her Neptune Avenue apartment, where she lived with her children.
Brooklyn prosecutors had been adamant that they wanted to head to trial with hopes of seeking life without parole for the killings.
But Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun made a court offer to Mendy, allowing her to plead guilty to three counts of murder in the first degree — taking life without parole off the table — on March 4.
The judge said Wednesday that life without parole is “reserved for special circumstances” and felt that Merdy had appeared remorseful at every court appearance over three years.
“Life without parole would not be most appropriate, even though she took the lives of those three children,” the judge said.
