Bronx daycare fentanyl death: Owner and neighbor are seen handcuffed after one-year-old died from exposure – as grandmother of another boy, 2, reveals he passed out face-up on playmat just feet from his sister
- The mom, whose two-year-old son is in critical condition and eight-month-old daughter is currently hospitalized, said that the ordeal was ‘just too much’
- Nicholas Feliz-Dominici was identified the deceased toddler who ‘ingested fentanyl’ at Divino Nino Day Care in the Bronx
The owner of a Bronx daycare center has been pictured for the first time since her arrest – after multiple children were hospitalized and one died of fentanyl poisoning under her care.
Divino Nino Daycare owner Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, and her neighbor Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, were arrested and each hit with 11 charges last night following the death of one-year-old Nicholas Feliz-Dominici.
They were both handcuffed and walked out of the 52nd precinct on Sunday, before entering separate cop cars and being driven to Bronx Criminal Court.
The duo are each facing a litany of charges – ranging from murder and manslaughter, to causing serious injury and possession of narcotics.
De Ventura, wearing a burnt orange sweater and blue jeans, eyed up photographers outside the police station this morning. Brito, dressed in a gray ensemble and a baseball cap, bowed his head while being perp walked.
Divino Nino owner Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, is seen on Sunday after her arrest over the death of one-year-old Nicholas Feliz-Dominici. Wearing a burnt orange sweater and blue jeans, eyed up photographers outside the police station this morning
De Ventura’s neighbor Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, (pictured) kept his head down as he left NYC’s 52nd precinct after also being arrested in connection to the overdose
They were handcuffed and walked out of the 52nd precinct on Sunday
Brito, dressed in a gray ensemble and a baseball cap, bowed his head while being perp walked
De Ventura and Brito’s full charge list includes: Depraved-indifference murder, manslaughter of a person under 11 years old, manslaughter recklessly causing death, four counts assault causing injury through risk of death, four counts of assault causing injury during a felony, four counts of assault causing serious injury, and four counts of reckless assault causing serious injury.
They are also facing three counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal possession of narcotics, and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
Law enforcement sources believe that the basement under the daycare where Brito lived was actually a front for drugs.
They are now trying to hunt down De Ventura’s husband, who also lived with her next door to the daycare. Police believe he may also be involved with the deaths, reports NYPost.
This comes after the devastated grandmother of two of the children who suffered with fentanyl overdoses at a Bronx daycare revealed how the siblings were found.
The mom, whose two-year-old son is in critical condition and eight-month-old daughter is currently hospitalized, said that the tragic ordeal was ‘all just too much right now.’
Her children – who have not been identified – attended the daycare with Nicholas Feliz-Dominici, the toddler who died after ingesting fentanyl while being cared for at the Divino Nino Day Care on Morris Avenue in Kingsbridge, The Bronx.
The grandmother of the children has described how the boy and girl were found passed out laying on a playmat on the floor and in an adjacent crib.
Pictured: Nicholas Feliz-Dominici, the one-year-old boy who died after ingesting fentanyl at a Bronx daycare
A sign on the front door of the daycare, with the word ‘learn’ spelled wrong
Law enforcement sources believe that the basement under the daycare where Brito lived was actually a front for drugs
Police tape had been stripped from the street and hung across the doorway of the Divino Nino Daycare on Morris Avenue
The boy was facing upright on the floor in the chilling image on the grandmother’s phone, reports the NYPost.
She said her son-in-law called her to tell her what happened – and she screamed down the phone.
The little boy is ‘not doing well,’ and the girl is ‘doing better today but she’s on a lot of drugs,’ the grandmother told the Post.
The grandmother of the unnamed son and daughter who were rushed to hospital said: ‘I don’t know what happened. So much irresponsibility.
‘They are babies. It’s her job to care for them, protect them. She needs consequences. I can’t believe this happened. I really can’t.’
The two siblings, along with two others, were rushed to hospital and given does of Narcan – to override the fentanyl overdose.
Meanwhile, the deceased boy’s distraught dad, Otoniel Feliz, 32, appeared teary-eyed as he spoke outside his apartment, just a 15 minute walk from the Morris Avenue childcare center.
It was his son’s first week at the center, he told DailyMail.com.
Father-of-five Feliz, whose son died, moved to the United States in 2018 from the Dominican Republic before moving his family to the apartment close to Divino Nino Day Care in 2019.
He and his wife, who asked to remain anonymous, went to the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center to find a suitable daycare for their son Nicholas.
As they waited close to a year to find a place to care for the young infant they were grateful to hear that Divino Nino Day Care could help them.
‘We had a good recommendation. We were told it was a great place. It looked like a nice place,’ he explained.
Otoniel Feliz, appeared bleary eyed as he spoke outside his apartment
A contamination tent could be seen outside the daycare on Friday afternoon
Four children under the age of three ‘ingested fentanyl’ while on the premises
But within one week of being cared for at the daycare, Nicholas ingested fentanyl – a substance that has caused a spike in overdoses across the U.S.
A heartbroken Otoniel said they’d been given a tour of the daycare the first time they dropped their son off and it looked like any other, with toys and kids’ furniture inside.
But after enrolling their son, Otoniel and his wife were never allowed to come back in their son often being brought to them by their caretakers, he claimed.
‘Parents don’t have permission to go inside. You see it on the first day to see where your son will be, but after that you don’t have permission to go in,’ he claimed.
‘They said they ‘don’t want contamination from the outside to go inside because they keep everything clean,’ that’s what they said.’
Revealing the harrowing moment in which Otoniel and his wife heard the news he explained that she’d gone to pick her son up early from the daycare.
Arriving at the center police tape, emergency services and cops were blocking the street, her heart dropped as she received a call no parent ever wants to hear.
‘My wife called me saying our child is going to hospital. We thought he was fine, 10 minutes later, my wife called me back on the way to the hospital and said he died,’ he explained, fighting back tears.
All four were taken to hospital but Nicholas didn’t survive.
The children had allegedly been put down for naps to be woken up at 2:30pm and had eaten something about 90 minutes earlier, sources said.
When cops arrived at the grim scene all four children were administered with Narcan, one of whom responded to the lifesaving drug police said.
Police tape hung across the doorway of the premises on Saturday with officers at the scene continuing their investigation.
The daycare has a capacity of eight children between the ages of six weeks to 12 years old, records show.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed ‘multiple drugs were found at the daycare as well as a kilo press
The once active crime scene had turned somber as neighbors began to grapple with the tragedy
Sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed ‘multiple drugs were found at the daycare as well as a kilo press.’
A kilo press is used to package large quantities of drugs.
Sources also confirmed all four children ‘came in contact with fentanyl.’
Divino Nino Daycare passed its annual unannounced inspection with zero violations on Sept. 6, city records note after receiving its license in May.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse describes Fentanyl as a powerful synthetic opioid that is FDA-approved to treat severe pain.
Over the past decade fentanyl has been made and distributed illegally and other illegally made synthetic opioids have been increasingly found in the drug supply.
During this time fentanyl and related substances have contributed to a dramatic rise in drug overdose deaths in the United States.
The rate of drug overdose deaths involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl more than tripled in the United States from 2016 through 2021, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, and has increasingly been mixed with other illicit drugs often with lethal results.
The CDC report showed that the rate of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl increased from 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 21.6 per 100,000 in 2021.
Fentanyl-related deaths rose by about 55% in 2019-2020, and 24.1% in 2020-2021, said Merianne Rose Spencer, one of the report’s authors.
In the United States, difficulties in getting treatment for substance use disorders during the COVID pandemic coincided with a jump in use of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, and opioid-related deaths soared to a record-high in 2020.
Between 2016 and 2021, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine increased more than fourfold, and cocaine-related overdose deaths more than doubled, the CDC said.
Oxycodone and heroin deaths fell marginally during the study period.
Roughly 2-in-100,000 died due to oxycodone-related overdose in 2016. That fell to 1.5-in-100,000 people in 2021.
Heroin related deaths decreased from 4.9 per 100,000 in 2016 to 2.9 in 2021, the report found.
The Biden administration has been pushing for action as U.S. drug-related overdose deaths surpassed 100,000 in 2021, according to government estimates.
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