Nicholas died that day from ingesting the deadly opioid fentanyl, because the day care center, whose name means “divine child” in Spanish, did not respect Nicholas’ divinity—or his right to life.
The center was, in fact, a packaging and storage area for fentanyl. Three other children were sickened by the poison but their lives were saved by Narcan, which counteracts opioid overdose.
Nicholas wasn’t that lucky.
“Nothing will give me back our son. Not all the gold in the world will make up for his life.”
It has happened again and again: Fentanyl, the deadly opioid considered 50 times stronger than heroin, has created a lethally disturbing connection with, of all things, day care centers.
Like an evil serpent, it has slithered into the very place where we daily keep our most precious resource, our children. We trust day care centers to keep them safe and, over and over, we are betrayed.
In Nicholas’ 2023 fatality, police arrested the owner, Grei Mendez, and a tenant, Carlisto Acevedo Brito, charging them with depraved indifference murder, assault and criminal possession of narcotics, including fentanyl.
But that was too late for little Nicholas.
The poison-peddlers were so uncaring about the lives of children that, fearing arrest, they took the time to dial a relative to come and remove the fentanyl before calling paramedics to treat the infants in their care.
Nicholas’ father, Otoniel Feliz, said, “Nothing will give me back our son. Not all the gold in the world will make up for his life. For a parent, the life of a child is priceless and the value will always be in my heart.”
In a separate incident, two people were recently arrested in the Bronx when police discovered over 17 pounds of fentanyl hidden in an apartment in a building where day care centers were also operating.
Is there no end to the depravity of these drug pushers? No bottom to the depth of their inhumanity?
Apparently not.
“This crisis is real, and it is a real wake-up call for individuals who have opioids or fentanyl in their homes,” said New York Mayor Eric Adams. “The mere contact is deadly for an adult and it’s extremely deadly for a child.”
That’s right—children don’t have to ingest the drug, because merely touching or breathing in fentanyl can kill.
“Fentanyl can be absorbed into the body via inhalation, oral exposure or ingestion, or skin contact,” the Centers for Disease Control warns.
So having fentanyl anywhere near curious infants who crawl on floors, who touch and taste things and who are terribly vulnerable is a very, very bad idea—and yet dealers do it intentionally, without regret.
Their evil lurks where innocent children play, happily unaware that their doom—their death—could be waiting for them mere inches away.
Perhaps drug dealers think a day care center is the last place law enforcement would expect to find the murderous drug, or perhaps drug dealers think these are safe places to stash their supplies of the powerful poison, but one thing is certain: They put children, the smallest children, in the unforgivable danger of suffering a terribly young death.
“We see a drug trafficking organization using an apartment as a stash location and as a milling operation only 30 feet from a day care on the first floor and another day care on the third floor,” said Frank Tarantino, DEA special agent in charge. “This is how they operate. They want to blend in as easily and as effectively as they can.”
In Lawrence, Massachusetts, police found fentanyl and methamphetamine stashed in the Sixta Child Daycare center and arrested Antonio “Tony” Solano, whose trial is scheduled for January.
Can anything be more despicable than putting infants next to a stash of a deadly drug, when just two milligrams of the toxin, about the weight of a single mosquito, can be a lethal dose—especially to the body of a child?
A study found that opioids are the leading cause of poisoning deaths among children 5 years old and younger.
Yet drug dealers have stashed large quantities of fentanyl on top of children’s play mats or under the floorboards of play areas.
What kind of monsters are these?
Science News reported that, in 2021 alone, 40 infants and 93 children from 1 to 4 years of age died from fentanyl.
Tell law enforcement, tell the governments of our land, tell politicians and influencers, tell anyone who will listen that this horrible massacre of our innocents must be stopped—and stopped now.
