Grei Mendez was sentenced to 45 years for fatal fentanyl poisoning in day care

After Fentanyl had killed three toddlers and killed a fourth at Divino Niño Day Care, the owner Grei Mendez said that he was being involved in a confusing catastrophe.

She told the investigators in a police district in 2023 that she had no idea how narcotics came into day care, according to court documents, which she had from an apartment from Bronx. She denied that smuggling was one of her or her husband, who had fled when a 22 -month -old Nicholas Feliz Dominici died.

But even when she described herself as an impeccable, hesitated Ms. Mendez evidence that contradict her demands. In the district, she deleted tens of thousands of text and voice messages from her phone, wrote the prosecutors, including some in which she and her husband Felix Herrera Garcia discussed.

On Monday, Ms. Mendez, 37, was sentenced to 45 years in prison before the Federal District Court in Manhattan, after he was guilty of distributing narcotics at the end of last year, which led to serious injuries and death.

When judge Jed S. Rakoff condemned the verdict, he said that Ms. Mendez had her own fear of getting into difficulties “over the opportunity to save a life”.

The poisoning of the four children, who were between eight months to a little more than two years old, prompted grief and outrage, and parents and government officials wanted to know how a childcare facility could have doubled.

Prosecutors now say that day care was opened as a cover for the narcotics surgery and added that a man who acted drugs there had delivered a reference for Ms. Mendez who told a city agency that it was “very good with children”.

In the days after Nichola’s death, a stream of worrying information was created. Police officers said Fentanyl had been found hidden under a mat on which children had slept. Ms. Mendez called Mr. Herrera Garcia before she called in 911. He had been captured to the building on video races and then fled through an alley and held heavy bags.

More than 11 kilograms of fentanyl and heroin were finally found in compartments under the floor. The prosecutors said that kitchen implements to prepare meals for the children were also used to pack drugs. During a hearing in October, in which Mr. Herrera Garcia was sentenced to 45 years in prison, a prosecutor said that the likely source of poisoning was “lunch of the children”.

Before the conviction on Monday, the parents of Nicholas turned to the court. His father, Otoniel Feliz, said he had lost the feeling that he had lost “part of my heart”.

Ms. Mendez also spoke and apologized to the parents’ parents who had been poisoned.

“Believe me, that traumatized me,” she said, adding: “Please have some pity with me.”

Her lawyer, Paul King, asked judge Rakoff for leniency and quoted the story of his client in poverty and abuse and said that she had no criminal history of drug activities before the poisoning.

The public prosecutor had told the court that Ms. Mendez deserved a life penalty in prison. She carried the “main responsibility for the inclusion of babies” in the narcotics surgery, wrote the prosecutors and had failed to say emergency staff to say that the children could suffer from opioid poisoning.

“According to a tragedy,” added the prosecutors, “they lied to law enforcement and destroyed evidence to protect themselves and their co -snacks.”

On Monday, Maggie Lynaugh said in court on Monday that Ms. Mendez noticed an hour before the reputation of 911 that Nichola’s “strange noises made”, but had not conjured up any help, and added: “She had the key to help these children and did not use it.”

Nine months before the fatal incident, Ms. Mendez filed an application to the New York City health department to open Divino Niño, according to the public prosecutor, and listed three references. One, from Renny Antonio Parra Parra Parra, who later admitted to the packaging of narcotics in day care, said that she was sent with children and had an excellent ability to create a safe environment.

Another reference came from a person who did not name prosecutors, but they said they were apparently also involved in drug trafficking. This person wrote that Ms. Mendez was “a beautiful caregiver”.

After the children were taken to a hospital in Divino Niño, investigators interviewed Ms. Mendez in the 52nd district in the Bronx. The public prosecutor wrote that it insisted that it would never have allowed the children to be with narcotics and added: “I know that the stuff kills.”

She also deleted more than 20,000 WhatsApp messages from her phone, said the prosecutors, including the exchange with Mr. Herrera Garcia, in which “the white bags” and “Packs of 10”, who said court files, were drug references. Many of these messages have been restored.

Among the voice messages that the investigators belonged to was a woman Mendez who left two months before the poisoning for a person who was not identified. The prosecutors wrote in a registration that Divino Niño was only maintained one front.

“This is not my kind of business,” said Ms. Mendez. “I have now realized that children are not my thing.”