A dad whose 2-year-old son narrowly avoided becoming the second casualty of a fentanyl cloud that kicked up inside a shady Bronx day care center last week said he thought the boy was going to die after being exposed to the deadly drug.
“He couldn’t walk or wake up from sleep,” Jose Lino, 32, recalled to The Post on Tuesday as he cuddled his little boy, Jaziel, at their Bronx home.
“We tried to wake him up, but he wouldn’t do it,” Lino added. “So we took him to the hospital.”
The toddler survived, but Nicholas Feliz Dominici, a 1-year-old boy who also attended the day care, died after also being exposed to the extraordinarily lethal synthetic opioid on Friday.
Two other kids under 3 years old were also struck by apparent fentanyl poisoning at the childcare center, which authorities said served as a front for a drug mill.
When asked if he was scared for his son’s life, Lino answered with an emphatic, “Hell yea!”
“When I see my son like that, I’m nervous,” Lino said, adding that Jaziel fell when he and his wife, Josselin, tried to get him to walk.
“He was sick,” the dad added.
The couple took him to BronxCare Hospital, where doctors treated him.
“Everything’s good,” Lino said. “The doctors say he’s going to be fine.”
Two people — Grei Mendez De Ventura, the 36-year-old proprietor of Divino Niño Daycare; and her cousin-in-law, Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41 — have been charged with murder for Nicholas’ death.
The pair allegedly used the business to cloak their true operation, a fentanyl drug mill.
They also face federal drug charges for their alleged crimes, Manhattan federal prosecutors announced Tuesday.
The fentanyl — which is a powerful opioid that’s at least 50 times stronger than heroin — also sickened an 8-month-old girl and another 2-year-old boy, in addition to Jaziel.
They were all hospitalized.
On Monday, Mayor Eric Adams said they were saved with naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug commonly known by its brand name, Narcan.
Little Nicholas’ death has devastated his family.
“It’s really hard … we are all heartbroken,” the boy’s dad, Otoniel Feliz, said Monday outside the family home in Kingsbridge, adding that his four other children are now fearful of even going to school.
“They don’t want the same as Nicholas [to happen to them],” he said.
Feliz, who works as a golf course maintenance worker in Westchester County, said his son had only been going to the day care for about a week before his tragic death.
“The drugs … this is dangerous,” he said. “My boy died. But it can be yours.”
On Tuesday, Lino said the people who ran the drugged-up center should be sent to prison.
“Those are bad people,” he said.
“They’re supposed to be taking care of little kids,” he continued. “They’re not supposed to be doing that … in the same apartment.”
