Unbeknownst to the parents who trusted them, owners Grei Mendez, 38, and Felix Herrera Garcia, 37, hid stashes of the drugs they sold beneath a hidden trap door in the floor where innocent children played and slept.
The same utensils used to prepare lunches for these children were also used to package deadly fentanyl pills for sale to drug addicts.
“I touched his little hands, and nothing. Since that day, our lives have never been the same.”
On September 15, 2023, the inevitable tragedy struck. Four children at the Divino Niño day care center—Kiara Garcia, 8 months; Nicholas Dominici, 22 months; Abel Garcia, 2; and Jaziel Lino, 2—were poisoned by one of the world’s most potent synthetic opioids and had to be hospitalized for overdose treatment. All received Narcan, the opioid antidote. Abel Garcia went into respiratory arrest but was revived at the hospital. Tragically, little Nicholas Dominici wasn’t so lucky.
Shockingly, before ever calling 911 to help the children, Grei Mendez phoned her husband, instructing him to come to the day care and remove their stash of drugs. Security cameras captured him rushing out with bags of narcotics, which he hid before fleeing to Mexico.
The pair were so self-absorbed and so hungry for the profits from their lethal pile of illicit narcotics that they were more concerned with avoiding jail than with tiny Nicholas as he breathed his last.
But now both must pay a heavy price for their wickedness.
Garcia was captured in Mexico on September 27, 2023, after nearly two weeks on the run. He was returned to the US to face trial along with his wife.
Already serving 45-year federal sentences for drug charges, the pair were slammed on March 4 with additional 25-years-to-life state sentences—to be served concurrently—for second-degree murder for the death of little Nicholas and assault for the poisoning of the other three children.
In other words, they won’t be out to kill more addicts and innocent children anytime soon.
Bronx Supreme Court Judge Margaret Clancy, who handed down the sentences, said, “It was chilling to listen to the 911 call that Ms. Mendez finally made while screaming that the babies were not breathing, but while also directing her husband out the backdoor. On the day the babies became ill, both attendants put themselves first.
“It defies the understanding that these defendants, parents themselves, could begin and continue their fentanyl and drug operations while at the same time seeking licensing from the city to operate the day care for the care of our young children. They continued to package and store fentanyl and other dangerous drugs in the very space where young children would be crawling, playing, sleeping and eating. No one can live in our community and not know the dangers of fentanyl.”
Nicholas’ mother, Zoila Dominici, offered a brutal window into the trauma endured by family members grieving their slaughtered loved ones.
She directed her anger squarely at Mendez, saying, “Nicholas didn’t deserve to die—she’s the one who should have. And every day, I ask God to punish her with the worst punishment on earth, because she messed with the most sacred thing one has in life: one’s children. Nicholas deserves true justice, because absolutely nothing will bring him back to my arms.
“I almost never sleep well because I can’t close my eyes and [not] see my son lying in that hospital bed with blood in his mouth, unresponsive,” Dominici said. “I spoke to him, I called him, I kissed him, I begged him to wake up. And he didn’t wake up. My son was still warm. I opened his beautiful eyes with my fingers and he didn’t wake up. I touched his little hands, and nothing. Since that day, our lives have never been the same.”
“Little Nicholas paid with his life for their greed; now Mendez and Garcia will spend the rest of their days in prison.”
Nicholas’ father, Otoniel Feliz, said it was “horrible that drugs were found in a place where children are cared for. In what mind does it make sense that you’re going to mix narcotics with children?”
When police searched the day care center, they found a kilo of fentanyl in a closet and 12 additional kilos of fentanyl, heroin and other narcotics under a trap door in the floor of the playroom, directly below where the children played and slept, along with kilo presses and drug packaging paraphernalia.
Attorney Andres Aranda, who initially represented Mendez, told Freedom Magazine, “The child care center has been closed. As soon as the feds came in, they closed it.”
Asked whether he thought the case was terrible, he said, “Yes,” but added that he could say no more due to a gag order in the trial.
“A beautiful little boy died and three children aged 8 months to 2 years became seriously ill from fentanyl poisoning,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark said.
“These babies were shields to protect a narcotics operation.… Little Nicholas paid with his life for their greed; now Mendez and Garcia will spend the rest of their days in prison.”
US Attorney Damian Williams said Garcia “fled the day care even as the children he abandoned inside were suffering from his poisonous trade.”
He added that Mendez admitted “she conspired to maintain and distribute large quantities of dangerously toxic fentanyl in a Bronx day care center, a place where parents expected their children would be protected and safe.
“From the beginning, this case has shown the senseless collateral damage caused by the fentanyl epidemic, and should remind us all that the demand for illegal narcotics so often puts innocent bystanders at risk, while drug traffickers ruthlessly pursue profits.”
Nicholas’ death is one of more than 74,000 fentanyl and other synthetic opioid fatalities in 2023—but unlike most, he had no choice whether to take the drug.
No statistic can show the devastation of illicit drugs more clearly than the words of the mother who lost her son to the greed and depravity of dealers.
“Today, Nicholas is in a cold cemetery, far from me, from the mother who brought him into the world.
“And all because someone I entrusted my son to didn’t care about the lives of those innocent children.”
