A lady who owned a New York Metropolis day care heart the place a toddler died after ingesting fentanyl has been sentenced to 45 years in jail after pleading responsible to federal drug prices.
Grei Mendez, 37, dropped her head into her crossed arms in anguish as Choose Jed S. Rakoff introduced the sentence that triggered sobs amongst Mendez’s household and the mom whose 22-month-old youngster, Nicholas Feliz-Dominici, died in September 2023.
Rakoff had beforehand given the identical sentence to Mendez’s husband, Felix Herrera-Garcia, after he pleaded responsible to drug prices and inflicting bodily hurt associated to the demise. The couple every confronted a compulsory minimal of 20 years in jail and a most of life for his or her crimes.
Mendez had pleaded responsible to drug prices together with conspiracy to distribute narcotics leading to demise.
Earlier than the sentence was imposed, she apologized to the households of youngsters who attended the Divino Niño day care that she operated out of a Bronx condominium the place the couple saved and packaged narcotics.
“I do want all to know it was an accident,” she mentioned by an interpreter. “I am very sorry. I hope that someday I may be forgiven.”
When the poisoning occurred on Sept. 15, 2023, Feliz-Dominici was rushed to a close-by hospital, the place he died. Three different kids uncovered to the fentanyl on the day care survived after medics administered the overdose-reversing drug Narcan.
Police discovered a brick of fentanyl saved on high of playmats for the youngsters, together with tools usually used to bundle medication, in addition to packages of fentanyl beneath a lure door in a play space.
Each of Feliz-Dominici’s dad and mom spoke on the sentencing, with the kid’s mom saying it was not attainable to forgive Mendez and the daddy describing the lasting ache, saying: “We’re living, but we’re not alive.”
Rakoff cited the feelings he as soon as felt when his older brother “was murdered in cold blood,” however he added that the “glory of the law is not to ignore emotions but to put them in broader perspective.”
He mentioned Mendez had chosen to place the welfare of her personal kids and her husband above the welfare of the households and their kids that turned clients of her day care enterprise.
In a presentence temporary, a protection legal professional submitted proof that Mendez had suffered trauma herself as a baby. Prosecutors urged a prolonged sentence, saying she ignored “clear warning signs” that the infants had been changing into critically unwell and took no motion to name for lifesaving medical intervention.
“And after tragedy struck, she lied to law enforcement and destroyed evidence in an effort to protect herself and her co-conspirators from their culpability in the death of one baby and poisoning of three others,” they wrote.
In a launch, Performing U.S. Legal professional Matthew Podolsky mentioned Mendez put infants as younger as 8 months previous “in harm’s way as they slept, played and ate in a room where over 11 kilograms of fentanyl was hidden underneath their feet.”
