One kilogram of fentanyl was found under mattresses at a New York daycare center where one child died and three others were taken to hospital, police say.
Police believe the children, aged between 8 months and two years, inhaled the powerful narcotic at the Bronx daycare last week.
Three children were given Narcan, an emergency medication used to reverse opioid overdoses.
Two people have been charged with criminal conspiracy and murder.
Nicholas Dominici, who would have been two years old in November and had only attended daycare for a week, died Friday of a suspected overdose.
A search of the children’s bedroom turned up a pound of fentanyl that was discovered “under a mattress where the children previously slept,” NYPD Chief Detective Joseph Kenny said Monday.
According to investigators, they also discovered three presses used to package kilos of drugs.
The owner of Divino Niño day care in the Bronx, Grei Mendez, 36, and her tenant Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, face federal charges of possession of narcotics “with intent to distribute resulting in death and conspiracy to distribute narcotics resulting in death “, according to federal prosecutors.
“The defendants poisoned four children and killed one because they were conducting a drug operation out of a day care,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damien Williams said at a news conference Tuesday.
Fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin, has been blamed for a rise in drug-related deaths. Police say drugs recovered from asylum may have killed 500,000 people.
Surveillance footage and phone records show that Ms. Mendez called her husband after finding the sick children, moments before contacting emergency services. Her husband then arrived and removed several full shopping bags from the daycare, officials said.
Authorities are still searching for her husband, who was identified in court documents as a co-conspirator.
A lawyer for Ms. Mendez said his client denies the allegations and was unaware that the drugs were kept in the nursery.
“His only crime was renting his room to someone who had a kilo,” his lawyer, Andres Aranda, said, according to ABC News.
“There is no evidence that he did anything other than adequately care for these children.”
It is unclear whether Mr. Brito, a cousin of Ms. Mendez’s husband, has a lawyer.
Both suspects have been labeled a flight risk by authorities and are being held without bail. They each face life in prison if convicted.
City health inspectors made a surprise visit to the daycare on Sept. 6 but did not identify any violations, city Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said.
“I’m very sorry, but one of the things my child care inspectors aren’t trained to do is look for fentanyl. But maybe they need it,” he said at a news conference Monday.
Mayor Eric Adams in the news conference called for a “full national assault” on the drug and alluded to its potency.
“A tenth of a fingernail can kill an adult. So imagine what it could do to a child,” he said, showing a photo showing a lethal dose compared to a dime.
Virtually every corner of the United States, from Hawaii to Alaska to Rhode Island, has been touched by fentanyl, research shows.
In 2010, fewer than 40,000 people died from drug overdoses nationwide, and less than 10 percent of those deaths were related to fentanyl.
By 2021, more than 100,000 people died from overdoses, approximately 66% of them related to fentanyl.