Reports say that a mother of 30 years, who refuses to answer Police questions, is accused of drowning her three children in Coney Island waters in the early hours Monday morning.

Police said that a boy aged 7 and two girls, ages 4 & 3 months, were found unconscious on the sand just before 5 a.m.

Senior law enforcement sources identified Erin Merdy, Brooklyn resident, as the mom of The Daily Beast. It is not clear if she has legal representation.

Reached by phone on Monday afternoon, Merdy’s aunt Dine Stephen told The Daily Beast, “Basically, people have mental issues, and that’s what needs to be focused on. Many people today are in trouble, and she was one. She struggled.”

“No one expected it to get to this level,” she added. “But obviously, she’s a woman who needs help. She has mental issues. We ask people to show grace and understanding. She’s not an evil person. She has mental issues that need to be addressed.”

In a separate interview, Stephens told the New York Daily News that “many family members have struggled with mental illness.”

“We lost Erin’s father… a few years back and now his precious grandchildren are gone,” she said, referring to her brother’s death.

Merdy’s uncle Eddy Stephen lives in Columbus, Georgia. He stated that he received the news from Dine at lunchtime Monday and was shocked.

“I knew she had some mental issues, with depression and stuff like that, but… not to that extent,” he told The Daily Beast. “I’m lost for words. The situation has shocked everyone. I don’t know what to say.”

Police responded to a call at around 1:40 a.m. from a concerned relative who “indicated she was concerned that her family member may have harmed her three small children,” according to New York Police Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.

Police then carried out a welfare check on the home, where they found the children’s father, who shared concern for his children’s safety and said he thought Merdy may have taken them to the boardwalk.

Police searched for the family for approximately 90 minutes on Coney Island Beach. They then received another call from a family member who was with Merdy—who was soaking wet and barefoot—some two miles from where they eventually found the children. The Daily Beast was informed by a police source that Merdy didn’t have any criminal records or a history of domestic violence.

Merdy was taken in by police for questioning. She did not respond to questions. Police are looking for witnesses who may be able shed light on the circumstances of the drowning. The News was told by a police source that Merdy called a cousin to confess to drowning her children. According to ABC News, police are investigating postpartum depression as an explanation.

Merdy’s neighbor Nargul Gunibekova said things became chaotic in the building in the aftermath of the grisly discovery on the beach.

“All night, people were screaming here, crying here, knocking on all the doors,” Gunibekova told The Daily Beast, noting that Merdy and her family moved in “not so long ago, I think less than a year.”

Merdy was quiet but “had a little crazy in her eyes” when Gunibekova saw her around their complex.

“We don’t know these people, they weren’t like, social or anything,” she continued. “These ones, they kept by themselves, they come and go in the middle of the night… Usually, you move into a building, you see the neighbors, you introduce yourself, ‘Hi, I’m so-and-so, I’m your new neighbor.’ These people, no. They didn’t say hi, nothing. I didn’t even know their names.”

Merdy had recently been embroiled in a custody dispute with the children’s father, an air-traffic controller in Virginia, according to law enforcement sources cited by the New York Post. The paper stated that Merdy reported the unidentified man last year to authorities. She accused him of sending abusive SMS messages.

An administrator at the Coney Island Lighthouse Mission, a nonprofit food pantry and soup kitchen on Coney Island’s Mermaid Avenue, told The Daily Beast on Monday that he doesn’t “personally know the family, but we are praying for the community.”

“Everyone is really shocked,” he said. “We’re all still just trying to figure out what was the cause of it.”

Gunibekova also hopes for answers but is still trying to deal with the allegations against her young mother next door.

“Poor children, it’s a horrible, horrible tragedy,” she said. “You can’t believe it really, how that’s possible.”

To Merdy’s family, what comes next remains uncertain.

“We’re taking it day-by-day,” her aunt said. “That’s all we can do.”

Her uncle remains “in shock,” grasping for the right words to express his deep sorrow.

“The way life is now, sometimes the way it turns, it’s tough,” he said. “But this is really just sad, sad news today.”

Reporting by Michael Daly

The post Mom ‘Not Talking’ After Her Three Young Kids Drown at Coney Island first appeared on Raw News.