Police in New York City are seeking the husband of a nursery owner after child fentanyl death.
PRESS RELEASE – source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66873058
Police are hunting for the husband of a New York City nursery owner after a one-year old boy died from a suspected drug overdose at the setting and three other children were taken to hospital.
Nicholas Dominici died after inhaling fentanyl (a synthetic painkiller) at the nursery operated by Grei Mendez, who has also been arrested.
Police have also reported that fentanyl was found on the mats used for sleeping by the children. NYPD chief detective Joseph Kenny said that one kilo of fentanyl was discovered “underneath a mat where the children had been sleeping earlier”, on Monday.
Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin and has been blamed for a huge rise in US drug deaths recently.
Three children from the same setting were revived with Narcan, an overdose-reversing drug, after police were called to the Divino Niño nursery in the Bronx and police are still trying to ascertain the identity of the nursery owner’s spouse, whom charging documents describe as a ‘co-conspirator.’
Surveillance footage and phone records show that Ms Mendez called her husband several times after finding the children ill – before she even contacted 911. Her husband then arrived and removed several full shopping bags from the nursery, officials have said. It has also been reported Ms Mendez also allegedly deleted approximately 20,000 texts from her phone before her arrest, according to prosecutors but authorities have since been able to recover these messages.
Police say the fentanyl recovered at the scene of the nursery could have killed 500,000 people.
More on this as we have it.