The owner of the Bronx daycare center where a toddler died from fentanyl exposure has been hit with federal drug charges — with court papers unsealed Tuesday revealing she allegedly deleted more than 20,000 messages to her still-wanted husband and tipped him off that cops were looking for him.
Grei Mendez De Ventura, the 36-year-old proprietor of Divino Niño Daycare, and her cousin-in-law, Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, used the façade of a child care center to cloak their true operation, a fentanyl drug mill, authorities have said.
But as cops picked through the center following the Friday death of little Nicholas Feliz Dominici – a 1-year-old boy who cops say inhaled the lethal opioid – De Ventura deleted 21,526 encrypted messages sent between March 2021 and Sept. 15, 2023, according to court documents.
Tomas E. Gaston
The brazen act took place while De Ventura was sitting in the NYPD’s 52nd Precinct stationhouse, prosecutors later told a judge in Manhattan federal court.
When investigators recovered some of the deleted messages, however, they found De Ventura had told her husband that cops were asking about him and that he should go look for a lawyer.
The horrifying case has “shocked the conscience of our city,” Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams told reporters at a news conference announcing the charges Tuesday.
Drug dealers selling fentanyl or cutting it into other drugs without buyers’ knowledge should “stop pushing this poison,” Williams added. “It ruins lives and it will ruin yours when we catch you, convict you and put you in federal prison.”
Frank Tarentino, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division, said that “every New Yorker should be outraged” by both the Bronx episode and by the fentanyl scourge nationally.
“Fentanyl is a killer,” he told reporters, adding that the synthetic opioid – which is at least 50 times stronger than heroin – “is now in everything and everywhere, killing victims instantly and indiscriminately.”
“Fentanyl is the most urgent threat in our nation,” Tarentino said.
Cops raiding the Kingsbridge day care facility found a kilo of fentanyl on top of mats the children slept on, as well as several kilo presses — devices typically used to combine the drug with either cocaine or heroin — inside the facility, court papers state.
Three other children under 3 years old were also exposed to the drug and “hospitalized with serious injuries” on Friday “as a consequence of the defendants’ drug conspiracy,” the feds alleged.
Prosecutors also revealed that as precious seconds ticked by following the kids’ exposure to the murderous drug, De Ventura – realizing the tots weren’t waking up from their naps – instead called another daycare employee and her husband.
She called her husband again after speaking to a 911 operator, the documents said.
He arrived before the cops showed up, according to surveillance footage. And though he walked in empty-handed, he walked out carrying what looked like two heavy shopping bags and fled through a back alley.
Authorities had not yet arrested De Ventura’s on the lam husband as of Tuesday afternoon – but expect to take him into custody soon, Williams told reporters.
“We’re not done,” the prosecutor said. “We’re going to get him. Look out for more on that soon.”
The charges brought by federal prosecutors include one count of possession with intent to distribute narcotics resulting in death and conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death.
De Ventura, wearing tan jail garb, was sniffling as she appeared before a judge on Tuesday evening – and shot a look to the gallery’s second row to her mother and 18-year-old daughter, the eldest of her four children.
She exclaimed “Ay, no!” when Judge Jennifer Willis ordered she be held without bail, pending a next court appearance in mid-October, where she is expected to enter a plea.
The judge said she agreed with the US Attorney’s Office, which said De Ventura – who is not a US citizen but is a legal permanent resident – could flee to the Dominican Republic where she has relatives, were she to be released from custody.
“Her husband has already fled, and there’s no reason to believe that she wouldn’t do so as well,” said federal prosecutor Brandon Thompson.
De Ventura’s lawyer, public defender Clay Kaminsky, argued that the deleted messages from her phone could have included “intimate” photos and texts she sent to her husband.
He also claimed that the call she made to her hubby was for just 10 seconds and that she could have made it in a “panic.”
Kaminsky asked the judge to set an unspecified amount in bail, arguing his client wasn’t a flight risk because her kids live in New York and “there is just no reason to believe” she’d leave them.
“It’s a little rich to say that she ran a fentanyl mill out of a daycare,” he claimed. “There’s no direct evidence that she knew about or distributed the narcotics.”
Brito’s attorney, meanwhile, agreed with prosecutors’ request for remand, and Brito was also ordered held without bail.
Both De Ventura and Brito have already been charged by Bronx prosecutors with murder for Dominici’s death, which authorities say happened after the little boy inhaled fentanyl that kicked into the air when adults were cutting up drugs for sale.
The three other sickened kids — a pair of 2-year-old boys and one of their 8-month-old sisters — were also hospitalized Friday, with one of the boys in critical condition, according to police.
On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said they were saved with naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug commonly known by its brand name, Narcan.
De Ventura and Brito each face up to life in prison if convicted.
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