When all the evidence was shown and a jury began to deliberate in the murder trial against a Bronx couple accused of turning their daycare into a fentanyl stash house that left one child dead and three others hospitalized, Otoniel Feliz Samboy couldn’t help but notice the date.
It was Monday, Nov. 17 — his son Nicholas Feliz-Dominici’s birthday.
“It would have been his fourth birthday,” Samboy, 34, told the Daily News Saturday. “It was really hard for us because we’re supposed to be celebrating Nicholas, but Nicholas is not here because of this.”
Courtesy of Family
Nicholas Feliz-Dominici
Four days later, on Friday, the jury found daycare owner Grei Mendez and her husband, Felix Herrera Garcia, guilty of second-degree murder and assault.
Nicholas was just 22 months old when he died from exposure to fentanyl at the Divino Niño Daycare in Kingsbridge on Sept. 15, 2023. Three other children, ranging in age from 8 months to 2 years old, were hospitalized.
Police later learned that the fentanyl exposure came from 11 grams of fentanyl and heroin found in trapdoors hidden under the playmats where the child napped and ate. A kilogram-sized brick of fentanyl and two press machines were also found in the daycare.
Investigators also discovered that the couple packaged the drugs with the same kitchen utensils they used to cook the children’s food, officials said.
“No kids are supposed to be at risk that way,” Samboy said. “No baby is supposed to be close to any drugs, even alcohol. No baby is supposed to be close to any danger. And they knew what they were doing.”
“They keep running this drug business with kids around,” he continued. “And then at the end this happened. You cannot justify your actions.”
When Mendez found little Nicholas and another child unresponsive that afternoon, she didn’t immediately call for help, prosecutors said. She first called her husband and another day care employee, who tried to take out the drugs before first responders arrived.
The couple had been running a drug operation out of the day care since 2022, officials said.
“They know those kids was sick and they don’t tell anybody,” Samboy said bitterly. “If they tell the doctor what is going on from the very beginning, Nicholas would be here. They decided who lived and who died. They don’t care about life.”
Samboy and his wife went to court every day during the prolonged trial, which began in late September.
“That was over three months, going every day,” he said. “That was painful and stressful because we have to face again, remembering what happened on those days.”
“They exposed every photo, every video,” he said. “That’s really hard to a parent to face in real time what was going on in this place on those days.”
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark announced the guilty verdict late Friday. The couple is expected to be sentenced next month.
“Nothing we can do will bring back Nicholas,” Clark said. “His death has torn a hole in the hearts of his mother, father and siblings, and saddened the entire Bronx community. I hope that these convictions will give the family a sense of justice and help them to gain peace and closure.”
Grei Mendez and Felix Herrera Garcia are already facing decades in prison on federal drug-trafficking charges, officials said.
Despite the heavy federal prison terms they’re already facing — Mendez was sentenced to 20 years, Garcia to 45 years — Samboy wants to make sure the judge overseeing the state criminal case levies a strong sentence against them.
“I know 45 is enough to people,” he said. “But as a family, we want to hear (a) big number from the judge for the sentence. They tried to say they’re not guilty. But, in the end, justice talked and those amazing members of the jury made their own conclusion, and finally they found those people guilty of those charges.”
“This does not make my family and myself happy,” he said, “but we feel a little peace after those results.”
