A New York daycare center director and her alleged accomplice are facing drug trafficking charges that led to the poisoning of four young children, one of whom died, while stockpiling fentanyl at the facility, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday.
• Also read: Baby Possibly Killed by Fentanyl in Daycare
Grei Mendez, 36, director of the Divino Niño (“divine child” in Spanish) daycare center in the Bronx neighborhood, and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, who lived at the facility, were arrested Saturday, the Police Department said in a news release.
The day before, emergency services responded to the daycare center following a call from Grei Mendez and found four children under the age of three drunk, one of whom died at the age of one, according to the same source.
The two defendants and other people had been involved in the fentanyl trade since at least July, including in the daycare center where “they stored large quantities.”
“Instead of caring for the well-being of these children, Grei Mendez and his accomplices put them in immediate danger by smuggling drugs and storing deadly fentanyl in the very room where the children ate, slept and played,” said the federal prosecutor the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, is quoted in the press release.
Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has flooded the drug market in the United States in recent years, is the leading cause of the approximately 110,000 overdoses recorded in the country in 2022.