Owner of NYC day care where toddler fatally ingested fentanyl gets 45
years in prison
[March 04, 2025]
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
NEW YORK (AP) — A woman who owned a New York City day care center where
a toddler died after ingesting fentanyl has been sentenced to 45 years
in prison after pleading guilty to federal drug charges.
Grei Mendez, 37, dropped her head into her crossed arms in anguish as
Judge Jed S. Rakoff announced the sentence that triggered sobs among
Mendez’s family and the mother whose 22-month-old child, Nicholas
Feliz-Dominici, died in September 2023.
Rakoff had previously given the same sentence to Mendez’s husband, Felix
Herrera-Garcia, after he pleaded guilty to drug charges and causing
bodily harm related to the death. The couple each faced a mandatory
minimum of 20 years in prison and a maximum of life for their crimes.
Mendez had pleaded guilty to drug charges including conspiracy to
distribute narcotics resulting in death.
Before the sentence was imposed, she apologized to the families of
children who attended the Divino Niño day care that she operated out of
a Bronx apartment where the couple stored and packaged narcotics.
“I do want all to know it was an accident,” she said through 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 nearby hospital, where he died. Three other children exposed to the
fentanyl at the day care survived after medics administered the
overdose-reversing drug Narcan.
Police found a brick of fentanyl stored on top of playmats for the
children, along with equipment often used to package drugs, as well as
packages of fentanyl beneath a trap door in a play area.
Both of Feliz-Dominici's parents spoke at the sentencing, with the
child's mother saying it was not possible to forgive Mendez and the
father describing the lasting pain, saying: “We're living, but we're not
alive.”
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In this image taken form video, Grei Mendez, center, is
escorted by law enforcement personnel from a New York Police
station, Sept. 19, 2023, in New York. (WABC-TV via AP, File)
Rakoff cited the emotions he once felt when his older brother “was
murdered in cold blood,” but he added that the “glory of the law is
not to ignore emotions but to put them in broader perspective.”
He said Mendez had chosen to put the welfare of her own children and
her husband above the welfare of the families and their children
that became customers of her day care business.
In a presentence brief, a defense attorney submitted proof that
Mendez had suffered trauma herself as a child. Prosecutors urged a
lengthy sentence, saying she ignored “clear warning signs” that the
babies were becoming seriously ill and took no action to call 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 release, Acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky said Mendez put
babies as young as 8 months old “in harm's way as they slept, played
and ate in a room where over 11 kilograms of fentanyl was hidden
underneath their feet.”
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