After fentanyl sickened three toddlers and killed a fourth at the Divino Niño day care, its proprietor, Grei Mendez, professed to be caught up in a bewildering catastrophe.
She told investigators at a police precinct in 2023 that she had no idea how narcotics had gotten into the day care, which she ran out of a Bronx apartment, according to court documents. She denied that contraband there belonged to her or her husband, who had fled while a 22-month-old, Nicholas Feliz Dominici, lay dying.
But even as she called herself blameless, federal prosecutors said, Ms. Mendez destroyed evidence contradicting her claims. Inside the precinct, she deleted tens of thousands of text and voice messages from her phone, prosecutors wrote, including some in which she and her husband, Felix Herrera Garcia, discussed trafficking drugs.
On Monday, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Ms. Mendez, 37, was sentenced to 45 years in prison after having pleaded guilty late last year to possessing and conspiring to distribute narcotics resulting in serious injury and death.
While handing down the sentence, Judge Jed S. Rakoff said that in not acting promptly to help the poisoned children, Ms. Mendez had put her own fear of getting in trouble “above the opportunity to save a life.”
The poisoning of the four children, who ranged in age from eight months to just over two years, prompted grief and outrage, with parents and government officials demanding to know how a child care facility could have doubled as a stash house.
Prosecutors now say the day care had opened as a cover for the narcotics operation, adding that a man who handled drugs there had provided a reference for Ms. Mendez, telling a city agency she was “very good with children.”
In the days after Nicholas’s death, a stream of disturbing information emerged. Police officials said that fentanyl was found hidden underneath a mat that children had slept on. Ms. Mendez had called Mr. Herrera Garcia before she called 911. He had been captured on video racing to the building, then fleeing through an alley, clutching heavy bags.
More than 11 kilograms of fentanyl and heroin were eventually found in compartments beneath the floor. Prosecutors said kitchen implements used to prepare meals for the children were also used to package drugs. During a hearing in October, at which Mr. Herrera Garcia was sentenced to 45 years in prison, one prosecutor said the likely source of the poisoning “was the children’s lunch.”
Before the sentencing on Monday, Nicholas’s parents addressed the court. His father, Otoniel Feliz, said he felt he had lost “a part of my heart.”
Ms. Mendez spoke, too, apologizing to the parents of the children who had been poisoned.
“Believe me, this has left me traumatized,” she said, adding: “Please have some pity toward me.”
Her lawyer, Paul King, asked Judge Rakoff for leniency, citing his client’s history of poverty and abuse and saying that before the poisoning she “had no criminal history of any drug activity.”
Prosecutors had written to the court that Ms. Mendez deserved a sentence of life in prison. She bore “primary responsibility for involving babies” in the narcotics operation, the prosecutors wrote, and had failed to tell emergency personnel that the children could be suffering from opioid poisoning.
“After tragedy struck,” prosecutors added, “she lied to law enforcement and destroyed evidence in an effort to protect herself and her co-conspirators.”
In court on Monday, a prosecutor, Maggie Lynaugh, said that Ms. Mendez had noticed an hour before calling 911 that Nicholas was “making strange sounds” but had not summoned assistance, adding: “She had the key to helping these children and didn’t use it.”
Nine months before the fatal incident, Ms. Mendez submitted an application to New York City’s health department to open Divino Niño, prosecutors said, and listed three references. One, from Renny Antonio Parra Paredes, who later admitted in court to packaging narcotics at the day care, said she was skilled with children and had an excellent ability to provide a safe environment.
Another reference came from a person whom prosecutors did not name but who they said also appeared to be involved in drug trafficking. That person wrote that Ms. Mendez was “a lovely caregiver.”
After the children at Divino Niño were brought to a hospital, investigators interviewed Ms. Mendez at the 52nd Precinct in the Bronx. Prosecutors wrote that she insisted she would never have allowed the children to be around narcotics, adding: “I know that stuff kills.”
She also deleted more than 20,000 WhatsApp messages from her phone, prosecutors said, including exchanges with Mr. Herrera Garcia discussing “the white bags” and “packs of 10,” which court papers said were drug references. Many of those messages were recovered.
Among the voice messages investigators listened to was one Ms. Mendez left for an unidentified person two months before the poisonings. It suggested, prosecutors wrote in one filing, that Divino Niño was maintained as little more than a front.
“This is not my type of business,” Ms. Mendez said. “I have now realized that kids are not my thing.”