The husband of the Bronx Day Care owner that authorities were searching for has finally been caught in Mexico, according to The New York Post.
Grei Mendez, 36, the owner of Divino Niño Daycare, and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, are accused of murder, manslaughter, assault, and more drug charges after a 1-year-old boy died of a suspected fentanyl overdose at a Bronx day care. As we previously reported, Calls began to come in on a Friday afternoon about an 8-month-old, 1-year-old, and a 2-year-old under cardiac arrest, but unfortunately, 1-year-old Nicholas did not survive. Officials announced they were found unresponsive, showing symptoms of opioid exposure. Police sources confirm Narcan was used on them.
The owner of the center has already been arrested, but now in a new report it reveals that Felix Herrera who was seen on surveillance video sneaking out the back of the day care center minutes before first responders found 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici dying from the drug was found on a bus headed to Sinaloa on Tuesday. Authorities reportedly got a tip from law enforcement that Herrera was holding up the south of the border. Mexican authorities captured the fugitive, working with agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration and the Marshals Service, the sources said. Herrera, 34 now becomes the fourth suspect charged in the heart-breaking case.
The parents of the 1-year-old boy who died of a suspected fentanyl overdose the day care are broke their silence about the devastating news as well. “We spoke to the ones who are in charge … They recommended that place and apparently complied with all of the rules. We were on a waitlist for our son to qualify. Apparently the place passed all of the inspections. Supposedly that apartment was only for day cares, but the rumor is, from what we have heard, they also rented rooms,” Feliz said in Spanish. The father, Otoniel Feliz also spoke out saying, “The hardest thing is for me to come home and open that door and not see Nicholas saying, ‘Dad, Dad.’ It is too hard. We can’t. Because the irresponsibility of people that don’t know, they don’t know that playing with drugs and leaving them where kids can reach them is too dangerous,” Feliz said.
“We don’t know what happened in this case … but what it tells us is that the overdose crisis affects all of us, which is why it’s an all-hands-on-deck public health moment,” New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said.
“It is a real wakeup call for individuals who have opioids or fentanyl in their homes,” Mayor Eric Adams said.
“Look at what happened. If I had known, I wouldn’t have taken him,” Dominici said. The medical examiner’s office says Nicholas’s exact cause of death is still pending.