Mom speaks out after 1-year-old’s suspected opioid death at Bronx day care

September 18, 2023

The heartbroken mom of 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici, who died from a suspected opioid overdose at a Bronx daycare being used as a drug front, said her son had only started at the center the week before, as horrifying details were revealed about the drugs strewn about at the scene.

Zoila Dominici and Otoniel Feliz’s 1-year-old son Nicholas was still getting adjusted to the daycare when he and three other tots fell ill from fentanyl found at the facility on Friday, according to the grief-stricken mother.

“We spoke to the ones who are in charge … They recommended that place and apparently complied with all of the rules. We were on a waitlist for our son to qualify,” his mother told CBS New York in Spanish.

Nicholas, who would have celebrated his 2nd birthday in November, was “so intelligent.”

“He would repeat everything you would say to him. He had so much love. Everyone who knew him appreciated him, all of our neighbors,” Dominici said.

The owner of Divino Niño Daycare Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, and her alleged cohort Caristo Acevedo Brito, 41, who lived in the basement along with the drugged-up daycare business, were taken into custody on Saturday.

Nicholas Feliz Dominici died after a likely fentanyl exposure at the Bronx day care.

The pair was charged with murder, assault and child endangerment in the suspected fentanyl-exposure death of 1-year-old Nicholas.

Police have launched a manhunt for Ventura’s husband, who lived with her next door and is also sought in the boy’s death, sources said.

Dominici and Feliz — Zoila Dominici and Otoniel Feliz’s 1-year-old son Nicholas only started at the daycare about a week before the incident.

Nicholas, who was the youngest of five children, and his family, lived within walking distance of the home-based daycare center, which was recommended to the family by Kingsbridge Heights Community Center.

The daycare, registered under the city’s Department of Children and Family Services, only opened this past January but passed a surprise inspection about a week earlier.

“Apparently, the place passed all of the inspections. Supposedly that apartment was only for day cares, but the rumor is, from what we have heard, they also rented rooms,” Feliz said.

Grei Mendez De Ventura, 36, the proprietor of Divino Nino Daycare, was taken from the 52nd Precinct in cuffs.

Fellow suspect Caristo Acevedo Brito lived in the basement daycare. — Fellow suspect Caristo Acevedo Brito lived next door to the basement daycare.

Three other children — two 2-year-old boys and the 8-month-old sister of one of them — remain hospitalized after being exposed to the deadly drug while at the facility, according to police.

The children were apparently exposed when the fentanyl was cut in the day-care center and some of it floated into the air, allowing them to inhale it, law-enforcement sources explained.

family — Nicholas was the youngest of five children.

Cops responded to a 911 call from the Kingsbridge child care center shortly after 3:30 p.m. Friday and found three of the children unresponsive. Some of the children were administered Narcan to try to save them.

Nicholas was rushed to Montefiore Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

When authorities went to the daycare Friday to investigate, they found three kilopresses, which are used to package large amounts of drugs, along with a kilo of fentanyl, prosecutors revealed in new filings.

“Look at what happened. If I had known, I wouldn’t have taken him,” the boy’s mother said.

His grieving father added: “The hardest thing is for me to come home and open that door and not see Nicholas saying, ‘Dad, Dad.’ It is too hard. We can’t. Because the irresponsibility of people that don’t know, they don’t know that playing with drugs and leaving them where kids can reach them is too dangerous.”