The troubled woman accused of drowning her own children in the waters off Coney Island is no monster, said the father of one of the kids at a touching sendoff Monday.
“Contrary to what happened, she was loved by her mother,” said grieving dad Shamir Small after the funeral for his 4-year-old daughter Liliana Stephen, one of three siblings killed early Sept. 12.
“I don’t care what no one says, what she did was monstrous, but she herself is not a monster.”
Small said he preferred to remember the way his little girl lived, and not dwell on the way she and her brothers died.
Liliana perished along with her 7-year-old brother Zachary Merdy and 3-month-old brother Oliver Bondarev when their mother, Erin Merdy, 30, recently hospitalized with post-partum depression, took them for a stroll to the beach and came back by herself.
The children, each with different fathers, were scheduled for separate funerals. The first one was for Liliana, who was laid to rest in a tiara and shimmering pink dress in a white casket carried out of Brooklyn’s Caribe Funeral Home by heartbroken female relatives.
Small remembered his daughter as a daddy’s girl who despite spending little time with her father, made every moment a special one.
Small recalled a recent Labor Day visit that remains etched in his heart. They hadn’t seen each other in a while, and the reunion was precious.
“Someone said, ‘that’s Daddy,’” Small recalled. “She said, ‘that’s Daddy?’ Then that was it. She was on my tail all day. All she needed was a little verification of who I was, and she was just on me all the time.”
A large photo of Liliana Stephen in the hallway of the funeral home showed the beaming little girl wearing a shirt printed with hearts, both her hands on one hip.
White, pink and silver star-shaped helium balloons floated above the casket along with one that read “I love you.”
“I do remember the last time I saw Zachary and Liliana,” an aunt, who did not want to be named, said after the service.
“I hadn’t seen them in a while and it was so funny because when I saw them — I didn’t see them that often — she and Zach and some of the other little cousins were all dancing and everything. It was hilarious. They were just like a three-ring circus around me.
“I came away after that day of seeing and being with them feeling so good and happy that I saw them and spent that time with them. I just want everyone to know what a wonderful, beautiful little girl she was.”
Authorities allege mom Merdy killed her daughter by holding the helpless girl beneath the waves. Liliana was declared dead at a nearby hospital less than an hour later.
Merdy, though struggling with mental illness, had no history of abusing her kids and there were no reports of domestic violence involving her children, city officials said.
But there was no talk of that Monday amid the pictures and balloons, and stories about the kid with the Kool-Aid smile.
“Please remember my daughter not for how she left but how she stayed,” Small said. “Liliana was a 4-year-old princess who loved dressing up in different costumes. She definitely loved to dance, gymnastics, ballet, she does love to perform for me.
“Lily was a daddy’s girl who bossed her father around when she got to see him,’’ Small said. “Zachary was really determined with what he wanted, stomped around if he didn’t get it. I actually never met Oliver, but I’m sorry for what has happened to him.”
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