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| Photo Credit: AP. |
NEW YORK (AP) — Three children were found dead on the beach near Brooklyn’s famed Coney Island boardwalk early Monday and police believe they may have been drowned by their mother.
The bodies
of the children, identified by police as Zachary Merdy, 7; Lilana Merdy, 4, and
3-month-old Oliver Bondarev, were found after a nearly three-hour search that
began at 1:40 a.m. when a relative called police, worried the woman intended to
harm her children.
The mother,
identified by family members as 30-year-old Erin Merdy, was found 90 minutes
later, barefoot and soaking wet, 2 miles (3 kilometers) down the boardwalk from
the section of Coney Island where she lived.
Detectives
were trying to question Merdy at the local police precinct house.
“So far, she’s
not said anything,” said New York Police Department Chief of Department Kenneth
Corey.
The search
for the children intensified after the mother was found alone. Police sent in a
helicopter and marine units. The children were found at the water’s edge
shortly after 4:30 a.m. on a quiet section of beach about 13 blocks from the
stadium where the Brooklyn Cyclones minor league baseball team plays.
Efforts to
revive the children at a nearby hospital failed, Corey said.
Merdy’s
mother, Jacqueline Scott, 56, told the Daily News that her daughter was a
loving mother but had been having a rough time recently.
“She might
have been going through postpartum depression,” Scott told the newspaper. “She
was a good mother.”
Scott said
she tried to talk to her daughter Sunday.
“I reached
out to her yesterday and she said she was doing laundry and I said I wanted to
speak to the kids,” Scott said. “I tried to call her twice on the phone after
that and there was no answer.”
The
children’s bodies were found three blocks from Merdy’s apartment building,
where police had first gone when the search began. Corey said officers had
canvassed the beach and the boardwalk, searched neighborhood streets and
checked the local hospital in the hunt for the children before the mother was found
on the boardwalk.
As they
continued to search the area, police found a shoe in the water and bagged it as
evidence.
A security
supervisor for Merdy’s building said the family had moved in less than a year
ago. Corey said the mother had not been reported to authorities previously for
abusing or neglecting her children.
A decision
hadn’t been made about what criminal charges Merdy might face.
Associated
Press writer Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.