News - World: A one-year-old infant boy has died after being overdosed by fentanyl allegedly stashed under one of the nap mats he slept on at a nursery in New York City, USA.

On Friday, Nicholas Dominici died and three other children were hospitalized for suspected opiate drug overdose (OD).

In this regard, the owner of the Divino Nino Daycare, Grei Mendez, 36, and her tenant, Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, are facing multiple charges, including murder and drug conspiracy.

"It's a tragedy for the children. It's a tragedy for her because I don't believe she's involved in what happened, so it's really bad all around for everybody," said Andres Aranda, Mendez's attorney.

Police investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what had happened.

On Friday, the daycare workers had put the children down for an afternoon nap, and then some of them would just not wake up.

First responders who arrived at the scene had administered Narcan, used to reverse narcotics overdoses, to the babies and it worked for at least one of them, police sources said.

Police believe the children at the nursery, ranging in age from eight months to two years old, had inhaled the fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin, that was stashed in the nursery.

One kilogram of fentanyl was discovered "underneath a mat where the children had been sleeping earlier", NYPD Chief Detective Joseph Kenny said on Monday.

"We allege the defendants poisoned four babies, and killed one of them, because they were running a drug operation from a daycare center," Manhattan US Attorney Damien Williams said on Tuesday.

"A daycare center - a place where children should be kept safe, not surrounded by a drug that can kill them in an instant," Williams noted.

Narcotics detectives said the fentanyl recovered from the nursery was enough to kill 500,000 grownups. The synthetic painkiller has been blamed for a rise in US drug deaths.

In 2010, around 40,000 people died from a drug overdose in the US, of which less than 10 percent were related to fentanyl. However, by 2021, over 100,000 people had died annually in drug overdoses, with an estimated two-thirds of them tied to fentanyl.

Source: Press TV