The owner of the Bronx daycare where a child died after inhaling fentanyl is a ‘very bad person’ who cheated her ex-husband into a fake marriage so she could enter the United States – and then made “live hell”. “, his family told the Post.
Grei Mendez De Ventura was able to move from her native Dominican Republic to the Big Apple nine years ago thanks to her green card marriage to Juan Ventura, a Bronx man she became involved with through from a mutual friend, his sister said.
“She gave my brother the false impression that she wanted to get married, so he flew her in from the Dominican Republic for the wedding. But when she got here, she just wanted to smoke hookah (and) drink a lot. And my brother, he’s not like that,” the sister said Friday from the family’s Fort George apartment.
“She wasn’t interested in marriage for him, she just wanted to come to America. She didn’t seem interested in my brother at all when she first came to America and (they) ended up divorcing because of the horror of it all,” said the sister and other family members, who asked not to be identified.
“He never wanted to go out and she just wanted to go out to clubs, be promiscuous,” she continued.
Mendez, 36, only visited the family home twice – “she didn’t care to know her husband’s family,” the sister lamented.
And that was enough for Ventura’s father to determine that she is “a very, very bad person” and disapprove of her for his son, he said.
“My son, who is educated, doesn’t like all that,” he added.
After the couple “happily” divorced after a “terrible” few years, the Ventura family completely cut ties with Mendez — and didn’t think about her again until they learned of the Sept. 15 horror in Divino Nino daycare.
One-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici died and three other children were hospitalized after inhaling dangerous amounts of fentanyl while in Mendez’s care at the Morris Avenue apartment, which authorities say was also a drug trafficking site.
Mendez and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, a 41-year-old man who rented the ground floor of the apartment, were charged with murder, assault and child endangerment following the incident.
Mendez is being held in Brooklyn and awaiting federal charges.
Authorities have since discovered a plethora of drugs and drug paraphernalia at the scene, including a kilogram of fentanyl placed on mats the children were sleeping on; “pound presses” or devices typically used to combine the drug with cocaine and heroin; and other powdery substances that are tested.
Ventura “went to counseling because of all the damage (Mendez) did to him” and refused to discuss his ex-wife’s alleged crimes with anyone, his sister said.
Ventura — who is now remarried, has a son and still lives in the Bronx, according to his sister — could not be contacted.
“(Mendez) really made my brother go through hell during the years they were married. .. And he’s really going through it,” his sister said again.
“We find it offensive that the name of the place is Divino Nino because it’s the baby Jesus, and we really believe a lot in the baby Jesus. And for a child to die there, for me, that’s really triggering,” Ventura’s sister said.
New York Post
