The owner of a Bronx daycare center has been pictured for the first time since her arrest – after several children in her care were hospitalized and one died of fentanyl poisoning.
Divino Nino daycare owner Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, and her neighbor Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, were arrested and hit with 11 charges each last night following the death of one-year-old Nicholas Feliz-Dominici.
On Sunday they were handcuffed and left the 52nd Precinct.
The two are accused of a range of charges ranging from murder and manslaughter to aggravated assault and drug possession.
De Ventura, wearing an orange sweater and blue jeans, eyed photographers outside the police station this morning. Brito, dressed in a gray ensemble and baseball cap, bowed his head as the perpetrator was led around.
Divino Nino owner Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, is seen Sunday following her arrest over the death of one-year-old Nicholas Feliz-Dominici
De Ventura’s neighbor Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, (pictured) kept his head bowed as he left New York City’s 52nd Precinct after also being arrested in connection with the overdose
On Sunday they were handcuffed and left the 52nd Precinct
Brito, dressed in a gray ensemble and baseball cap, bowed his head as the perpetrator was led around
De Ventura and Brito’s full list of charges includes: murder by depraved indifference, involuntary manslaughter of a person under 11 years of age, involuntary manslaughter resulting in death, four counts of assault causing injury by endangering death, four counts of assault causing injury during the commission of a felony, four counts of assault causing bodily harm causing serious injury and four counts of reckless assault causing serious injury.
They also face three counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal possession of a controlled substance and four counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
This comes after the distraught grandmother of two of the children who suffered from fentanyl overdoses at a Bronx daycare revealed how the siblings were found.
The mother, whose two-year-old son is in critical condition and whose eight-month-old daughter is currently in hospital, said the tragic ordeal was “just too much at the moment”.
Her children – who were not identified – attended the daycare along with Nicholas Feliz-Dominici, the toddler who died after taking fentanyl while being cared for at Divino Nino Day Care on Morris Avenue in Kingsbridge, Bronx.
The children’s grandmother described how the boy and girl lay unconscious on a play mat on the floor and in an adjacent crib.
Police tape had been removed from the street and hung outside the entrance to the Divino Nino Daycare on Morris Avenue
In the scary picture on the grandmother’s phone, the boy was sitting upright on the floor, the NYPost reports.
She said her son-in-law called her to tell her what had happened – and she was screaming on the phone.
The little boy is “not doing well” and the girl is “doing better today, but she’s doing a lot of drugs,” the grandmother told the Post.
The grandmother of the unnamed son and daughter who were hospitalized said: “I don’t know what happened.” So much irresponsibility.
“They are babies.” It is her job to care for them and protect them. She needs consequences. I can’t believe this happened. I really can not.’
The two siblings were hospitalized along with two others and given doses of Narcan – to overcome the fentanyl overdose.
Pictured: The one-year-old boy who died after taking fentanyl at a Bronx daycare center
Meanwhile, the deceased boy’s distraught father, Otoniel Feliz, 32, appeared to speak with tears in his eyes outside his apartment, just a 15-minute walk from Morris Avenue Daycare. It was his son’s first week at the center, he told .
Father-of-five Otoniel Feliz, whose son died, moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 2018 before moving with his family into the apartment near Divino Nino Day Care in 2019.
He and his wife, who wished to remain anonymous, went to the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center to find a suitable daycare center for their son, Nicholas.
While they waited nearly 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 misty-eyed as he spoke to Web.com outside his apartment
On Friday afternoon, a contamination tent could be seen in front of the daycare center
Four children under the age of three “took fentanyl” on the premises.
But within a week of being in day care, Nicholas took fentanyl, a substance that has caused a spike in overdoses across the United States
Heartbroken Otoniel said they were given a tour of the daycare when they first dropped off their son and it looked like any other, with toys and children’s furniture inside.
But after enrolling their son, Otoniel and his wife were never allowed to return as their son was often brought to them by their carers, he claimed.
“Parents don’t have permission to go in.” “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 the contamination from outside to get inside because they keep everything clean,” they said.
He revealed the shocking moment Otoniel and his wife heard the news, explaining that she had picked up their son from daycare earlier.
When she arrived at the center, police, emergency services and police officers blocked the street. Her heart sank as she received a call that no parent ever wanted to hear.
“My wife called me and said our child was going to the hospital. “We thought he was fine, but ten minutes later my wife called me back on the way to the hospital and said he had died,” he explained, fighting back tears.
All four were taken to hospital, but Nicholas did not survive.
The children were reportedly put in for a nap, only to be woken up at 2:30 p.m., and had eaten about 90 minutes beforehand, sources said.
When police arrived at the grim scene, all four children were administered Narcan, one of whom responded to the life-saving drugs, police said.
On Saturday, a police tape hung over the door of the site showing officers on site continuing their investigation.
The daycare has capacity for eight children ages six weeks to 12 years, records show.
Sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed that “several drugs were found at the daycare center as well as a kilo press.”
The once active crime scene had turned grim as neighbors began to come to terms with the tragedy
Sources with knowledge of the investigation confirmed that “several drugs were found at the daycare center as well as a kilo press.”
Large quantities of medication are packaged using a kilo press.
Sources also confirmed that all four children “came into contact with fentanyl.”
Divino Nino Daycare passed its annual unannounced inspection on Sept. 6 with no violations, city records say, after receiving its license in May.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse describes fentanyl as a powerful synthetic opioid approved by the FDA to treat severe pain.
Over the last decade, fentanyl has been manufactured and distributed illegally, and other illegally manufactured synthetic opioids have increasingly been found in the drug supply.
During this time, fentanyl and related substances have contributed to a dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths in the United States.
The number of drug overdose deaths related to the synthetic opioid fentanyl more than tripled in the United States from 2016 to 2021, according to a report from 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 is increasingly being mixed with other illegal drugs, often with fatal consequences.
The CDC report showed that the rate of fentanyl-related drug overdose deaths increased from 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2016 to 21.6 per 100,000 in 2021.
According to Merianne Rose Spencer, one of the report’s authors, fentanyl-related deaths increased by about 55% in 2019-2020 and 24.1% in 2020-2021.
In the United States, difficulties in treating substance use disorders during the COVID pandemic coincided with a surge in the use of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, and the number of opioid-related deaths rose to a record high in 2020.
Between 2016 and 2021, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine increased more than four-fold, and the number of cocaine overdose deaths more than doubled, the CDC said.
Deaths from oxycodone and heroin decreased slightly during the study period.
In 2016, about 2 in 100,000 people died from an oxycodone-related overdose. In 2021, this figure fell to 1.5 per 100,000 people.
According to the report, heroin-related deaths fell from 4.9 per 100,000 in 2016 to 2.9 in 2021.
The Biden administration is pushing for action as the number of drug-related overdose deaths in the U.S. surpassed 100,000 in 2021, according to government estimates.