Authorities are investigating the deaths of three children found unresponsive on a New York shoreline early Monday after a family member raised concerns for their safety.
The children – a 7-year-old boy, a 4-year-old girl and a 3.5-month-old girl – were found in Coney Island, Brooklyn around 4:42 a.m., the New York police chief said. of the Kenneth Corey Department.
A 30-year-old woman police say is believed to be the child’s mother underwent a psychiatric evaluation at a hospital Tuesday morning, a law enforcement official said.
She was questioned by police and then hospitalized after she was found Monday morning in Brighton Beach, next to Coney Island, authorities said. She has not been charged with a crime, police said, and authorities have not released her condition.
All three children were pronounced dead after first responders performed life-saving measures, including CPR, Corey added.
“We don’t know exactly what happened here,” Corey said Monday during a news conference, stressing that the information was preliminary.
There is no indication at this time of prior child abuse or neglect, authorities noted.
As investigators piece together exactly what happened to the children and the woman, here’s what we know about how things unfolded:
Police received a 911 call at 1:40 a.m. on Monday by someone concerned that “a family member may have harmed her three young children,” Corey said. The caller asked police to check the woman’s apartment in Coney Island.
When police arrived at the apartment, a man who identified himself as the father of one of the three children said he was also concerned, Corey added. The man told police he believed the woman and three children were on a boardwalk in Coney Island.
For about 90 minutes, officers searched beaches, streets and a local hospital. Another 911 call then came in, directing officers to a specific location — Brighton 6th Street and the Riegelmann Boardwalk in nearby Brighton Beach.
The caller reported a woman who was distraught, a police spokesman told CNN.
When officers arrived, they found the woman and other family members with her. The children were not there.
The search continued through ground, air and port units. Around 4:42 a.m., officers found the children unconscious on the shore at West 35th Street in Coney Island, Corey said.
The spot in Coney Island where the children were found is about 2 miles from where the woman was found – and just half a mile south of her apartment.
She was “wet” when investigators made contact with her, said Corey, who noted that it was unclear whether she was in the rain or the water off shore.
By Tuesday morning, the shoreline where the children were found showed no sign of what unfolded a day earlier — no crime scene tape, no police presence — as few people walked along the beach and boardwalk.
The woman’s apartment is in a roughly 20-story building a few blocks north, across from an elementary school and near a small shopping center, a grocery store, a dental implant center and a pharmacy.
Leslie Torres, 33, who works near the building, used to see the 4-year-old girl playing outside with others. Torres did not know about the boy, but the woman was often with the baby and the 4-year-old, Torres said Tuesday.
“We were (watching them) out here playing. We would give them Popsicles. They were good kids,” said Torres, who works at a school for home health care aides that supports the apartment building.
The 7-year-old boy was a kind, generous person with a special humility about him, his father told CNN Tuesday morning.
“Anyone who knew my son would know he’s special,” said father, Derrick Merdy.
He loved the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog. “I think I spent so much money buying him every last one of them,” Merdy said.
The boy “had a humility about him that I can’t even imitate, and I will do my best to live like him because he was so kind and generous,” the father said.
“He would be great.”
