The husband of the owner of a New York City day care center where a baby died after having been exposed to fentanyl was charged with two federal narcotics counts Thursday, prosecutors said.
Felix Herrera Garcia fled to Mexico after 1-year-old Nicholas Dominici was fatally sickened by exposure to the powerful synthetic opioid at the Divino Niño day care center in the Bronx on Sept. 15, officials said.
He was captured in Mexico this week and was returned to the U.S. on Wednesday night and arrested, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said.
Herrera Garcia is the fourth person charged. The others are his wife, Grei Mendez, 36, who owns the day care center; Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41; and Renny Antonio Parra Paredes, 38.
The scheme involved “running a fentanyl mill hidden inside a Bronx daycare,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Nicholas and three other children were sickened at the day care center on Sept. 15, and Mendez called 911 around 2:40 p.m., a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent wrote in an affidavit filed with the criminal complaint.
But right before she called 911, she called Herrera Garcia, and video showed him walking from the building next door, entering the day care center and leaving through a back alley with two shopping bags weighed down with items before first responders arrived, the special agent wrote.
Authorities said a kilogram of fentanyl was kept on children's sleeping mats, a kilo press was found at the day care center, and "traps," or compartments used to store drugs, were found in the floor.
Besides Nicholas, two other children became unresponsive at the center, and a third was lethargic and not responsive at home after having been picked up, according to the affidavit.
All were given the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan and were hospitalized with serious injuries, officials said.
Herrera Garcia is charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death and possession with intent to distribute narcotics resulting in death, the office said.
Online court records did not appear to be available for Herrera Garcia's case Thursday, and it was not clear whether he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
