According to the New York Daily News, the incident occurred on Sept. 12. Police found Erin Merdy alone, barefoot and wet, on Brighton Beach’s boardwalk after a family member called the police.

Merdy had been struggling personally and financially — she had recently been hospitalized with postpartum depression and was facing eviction, a nasty custody battle and a history of mental health issues, the New York Post reports.

Prior to the police finding her, Merdy allegedly told a relative “that she had hurt her children and that they are gone,” The Sun reports.

This wasn’t the first time Merdy has said some troubling things regarding her children. She allegedly sent many text messages that were alarming as well, the New York Daily News reports.

According to The Sun, when she was taken into police custody, she told officers that she had dreams about her children in the water.

When they arrived at the scene, they didn’t just find the 30-year-old woman, they also found her three kids. The kids were at the water’s edge, unconscious and unresponsive. They later died at a hospital.

 

The New York City’s medical examiner’s officer determined their cause of death as homicides by drowning, The New York Times reports.

According to The Sun, New York Police Department’s Chief of Detectives James Essig said, “We believe she went into the water and drowned the kids. … Regarding the motive, we’re going to leave that up to the health care professionals.”

Merdy had been faced with some mental health challenges prior to the incident.

According to her uncle, Jean Stephen, Merdy didn’t “have her life together,” the New York Post reports. And other family members noted that she had a tough time staying afloat and maintaining relationships.

“There was a time when Erin and I were in contact all the time, but in 2015, 2016, she disappeared off the Earth. I didn’t know how to get in touch with her,” another one of Merdy’s uncles, Levy Stephen, told the Post. “Now I’m faulting myself for that. She obviously needed help, and you can’t help but think, ‘Maybe I could have…'”

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services expressed a similar sentiment.

According to the New York Daily News, it stated that Merdy “fell through the cracks” of their system. She was released from their care without a psychiatric examination two months ago, despite having faced mental health issues.

Merdy was allegedly incoherent and rambling when she was arrested, CBS News reports. And after confessing to dreaming about her kids in the water, she was transferred from the 60th Precinct station house to a hospital in Brooklyn for a psychiatric evaluation, the New York Daily News reports.

According to The Sun, Merdy has been charged with first- and second-degree murder in the deaths of her three children.

Meanwhile, the community is mourning Zachary, Liliana and Oliver’s life.

According to the New York Daily News, approximately 100 mourners attended a wake for Liliana and Zachary. Liliana was laid with a tiara on her head and surrounded by stuffed animals. Zachary had a toy car in his hands, and both kids had star-shaped balloons tied to their caskets.

Details about Oliver’s wake and funeral are unknown.

Amid these developments, Levy said he wonders what will happen to Merdy.

 

“How does she come back from this? Even if you get your mind back, how do you get over the fact that you killed your children?” he said, according to the Post.

He added that she’ll have “a shadow that’s going to be over her for the rest of her life.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” he continued. “I don’t think there’s a support group for people who commit such a heinous crime. Are there people who are functional that have done this?”