Football coach of boy drowned with siblings at Coney Island recalls hungry youth, indifferent mother
The one-time football coach of a Coney Island boy apparently drowned with two younger siblings by their troubled mom detailed the distant relationship between the parent and her son.
Head coach Allen McFarland said he and other coaches with the Coney Island Training Youth Silverbacks football team would stop by the home of Zachary Merdy, 7, and walk the grade-schooler over to practice. The boy’s indifferent mother rarely attended the games to watch her son play, the coach added, and the boy was often hungry when he arrived for team meals.
“Something that was noticeable was when we fed him the pasta it was always, ‘Can I have some more, can I have another?’ ” McFarland recalled Monday. “We used to bring him over and feed him at practice.”
Dozens of balloons were strung from a fence at Kaiser Park in Coney Island on Monday alongside silver balloons arranged in a No. 15 — the number Zachary wore as he played for the youth football team.
“We are playing this season for Zack,” McFarland said at a vigil-turned-football practice at the park three blocks from where the boy lived on Neptune Ave.
Zachary was discovered unconscious near the shoreline at W. 35th St. hours after police responded to 911 call at 1:40 a.m. on Monday from his aunt, police said.
Also found unresponsive were his sister Liliana Merdy, 4, and his 3-month-old baby brother Oliver Bondarev, cops said. The three children were declared dead at 5:38 a.m. after being rushed to Coney Island Hospital.
“You can only imagine what the kids were going through as they took their last breaths,” McFarland said of the victims. “It’s heartbreaking. The only person you can really trust in the whole world is your mom.”
Zachary played receiver, linebacker and some offensive line for the Silverbacks before the boy stopped showing up for team events this past May, with the mom ignoring text messages asking what happened, McFarland recalled.
The 30-year-old mother, Erin Merdy, called a cousin early Monday and told them she drowned the kids, police sources said, sparking the 911 call and a frantic search by cops.
Merdy was taken into custody at the 60th Precinct stationhouse before she was transported to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. She was not immediately charged in her children’s deaths.
Merdy would often skip her son’s games — and when she did come, she’d quickly leave, the coach said.
“She was always in a rush,” McFarland said. “She seemed to be juggling a lot of things.”
Over the summer, the coaches reached out to Merdy to remind her of the upcoming season after Zachary and his teammates had clinched the championship a year earlier.
“She was really excited, but then it was, ‘We’ll think about it, Coach,’ ” McFarland said. “She never gave a flat-out answer as to why he wasn’t playing.”
At practice Monday night, the team gathered to pray for Zachary and shared a group hug before running drills.
They closed the huddle with a clap and a chant, “Zachary, we love you!”
“Some of them are taking it really hard,” McFarland said of Zachary’s teammates. “And some of them are just finding out about it. There is a real sharp pain.”
