Add The New York Post on Google A 4-year-old girl who was drowned by her mother off Coney Island had tragically begged not to be sent home — telling her father she was “scared to go back to mommy” before she was killed alongside her siblings, he revealed Wednesday at his ex’s sentencing.
Shamir Small, the father of Liliana Stephens Merdy, said his daughter was fearful of going to see mom Erin Merdy, and he heartbreakingly shared that he told her, “I hope I see you again” before the child was brutally killed by her troubled mom in Sept. 2022.
“The last thing Lily said to me and my mother — which will forever haunt me — was ‘I’m scared to go back to mommy, and want to stay here with you and grandma’,” Small said in a gut-wrenching victim impact statement.
Merdy, now 34, was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison in Brooklyn Supreme Court after she admitted to drowning her three children — Zachary, 7; Liliana Stephens, 4; and Oliver Bondarev, just 3 months — in the ocean near their Coney Island home.
The tragic killings stemmed from Merdy’s struggle with mental health, specifically postpartum depression, which she said pushed her over the edge on Sept. 12, 2022 in a night she described as a “blur.”
“If I had to describe it, I was on autopilot,” the troubled mom told the court, claiming that she couldn’t remember most of what happened on the night of the deaths.
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.”
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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.
