‘I can’t believe my baby’s gone’
Ma of tot killed by OD says drugs in apt. weren’t hers
The tears kept flowing as Daira Santana-Gonzalez described the sight of her adorable baby boy, his hand hanging limply and his breathing stopped, just two mornings after Christmas.
One-year-old Darwin was exposed to a lethal dose of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine in their Bronx apartment as his exhausted mother slept, with Santana-Gonzalez awakening to find the unresponsive baby in his bed. And while she blames herself for what happened, the mother said she’s not guilty of anything in Darwin’s death.
“I feel pain every day,” the 23-year-old Bronx mom told the Daily News in a weepy Rikers Island sitdown. “Everyone knows I loved Darwin. I would never do anything to hurt my son. l loved my son.
“My baby’s gone. I can’t believe my baby’s gone.”
Though no one is accused in the Dec. 27 overdose death, police believe the apartment shared by Daira and her estranged husband Antonio Modesto Gonzalez was used to package illegal drugs — creating the deadly conditions that killed Darwin, who somehow ingested the toxic mix wafting through the home.
The anger boils up in the imprisoned Santana-Gonzalez as she recounts their life with an abusive husband already blamed for the death by Darwin’s maternal grandmother.
“He put me through so much s—,” Santana-Gonzalez said Friday of her spouse. “He never did anything for us. He would punch me like a man, like I wasn’t a woman, like I wasn’t his wife.”
Neither parent was charged in the little boy’s death, although the mother was jailed on an unrelated drug charge and a Bronx grand jury will determine criminal responsibility in the overdose.
Santana-Gonzalez suggested her spouse, who remained a fugitive Friday, could face vigilante justice at the hands of New Yorkers.
“Put his picture up everywhere,” she encouraged a reporter. “Because people are going to find him. He’s going to get his. Even if he’s on the street, he won’t be long.”
The mother recalled coming home last December to the family’s Morris Heights apartment after a 13-hour shift at a restaurant/club to find Darwin awake in the living room around 4:30 a.m. Her husband and his cousin were both there.
Santana-Gonzalez awoke just before 10 a.m. to find her little boy was in his bed and not breathing. She and her husband then ran down the building stairs for help as he carried their son in his arms.
The pair jumped into a cab and flagged down a passing police car as the taxi sped toward St. Barnabas Hospital. The cops performed CPR, but it was too late for little Darwin.
According to Daira, her husband disappeared quickly as cops first consoled her and then asked for access to her apartment.
“I said, ‘Break down my door. Go ahead, I have nothing to hide,’” she recalled.
But her husband apparently did: Cops recovered a wad of cash hidden in his closet, along with empty envelopes used to package drugs. And police said a “significant amount” of drugs were found inside the apartment.
A security video even showed the husband’s cousin carrying two suitcases out of the apartment and giving them to a neighbor, according to the mom.
“I didn’t know he was doing this,” insisted SantanaGonzalez. “I don’t know if he was selling drugs or if he was about to start making drugs … It wasn’t my stuff, and he was always there.”