At a news conference Monday night, Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny detailed how close the powerful narcotic was to the children: “under a mat where they had been sleeping earlier.”
The owner of the Divino Niño daycare, Grei Méndez, 36, who was detained since the same Friday when the tragedy occurred, affirms that she was not aware of the presence of the drugs, valued at several thousand dollars.
Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, is also detained in this case, and the police are looking for a third person.
Mendez and Acevedo are charged with 11 criminal counts including murder, manslaughter and assault.
Inspectors not prepared to look for fentanyl in a daycare center
As the disturbing discovery emerged, Mayor Eric Adams and his administration officials defended the daycare monitoring program. “The team did its job,” stressed the mayor.
The Divino Niño daycare, in fact, had been inspected for the last time by officials from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on September 9, when they made a surprise visit, without prior notice.
Ashwin Vasan, the city’s health commissioner, said at the same press conference that inspectors found that the daycare center was in full compliance with a 40-point checklist and noted that “all medications and toxic substances” were “used and stored incorrectly.” so that no danger was created” and that “poisonous, toxic, flammable and dangerous articles were inaccessible to children.”
Vasan stressed that searching for drugs is not the usual practice of inspectors, who are not trained for it, but “perhaps we have to start.”
Father of deceased child demands justice
The one-year-old boy who died in daycare was named Nicholas Dominici.
Nicholas had only been attending daycare for a week. “We looked for it through a homepage (the daycare), which is supposed to ensure that it is a good place for children (…) In what mind does it fit that you are going to mix narcotics with children, it is something horrible,” declared his father.
Otoniel Feliz said that “whether they (the detainees) are guilty or not, the real culprit knows that he has to pay.”
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid drug that is extremely dangerous outside the clinical setting, warns the New York Police Department.
Authorities are still determining how the minors could have been poisoned, “through inhalation, ingestion or contact with the skin,” said Commissioner Vasan.
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2023-09-19 14:47:00
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