Baby dead at hotel
2 women & drugs eyed in Midtown tragedy
Police are investigating the death of a 4-monthold baby boy early Saturday while in the care of two drug-addled women found wandering around the Hotel Pennsylvania.
Police were mulling charges against the babysitters — two women, including the infant’s stepsister, whom police sources said were discovered at 1:10 a.m. walking around the lobby and hallways of the Seventh Ave. hotel with the unconscious baby in tow.
The infant, identified as Dominic Greene of Wilmington, Del., was unresponsive and rushed to NYU Medical Center, but doctors were unable to save him.
The baby didn’t appear to be injured, cops said. An autopsy was ordered to determine the cause of death.
According to sources, one of the babysitters, identified by sources as Roneisha Collier, is the 24-year-old stepsister of baby Dominic; the other woman, 26-year-old Kiara Watson, is Collier’s fiancée.
The stepsister had been asked to look after the infant, relatives told police. The three had taken a bus from Baltimore to New York, but it was not immediately clear how long they had been in the city before they were found at the hotel.
A hotel employee became concerned when he saw the women standing in a hallway off the lobby, cops said.
Dominic’s stepsister was holding the baby, trying to feed him a bottle, but the infant wasn’t moving, sources said.
A hotel employee called police when he realized the infant wasn’t breathing, cops said.
Both women appeared high and had heroin on them, sources said. Neither had rented a room at the hotel, which is across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.
On Saturday, crime scene investigators had taped off a hotel elevator the women had used. Another room, the hotel’s internet business center, had also been taped off.
A hotel manager said staff was working with police, but had no immediate comment.
It was not immediately disclosed how long Dominic, his stepsister and her fiancee, who are also both from Delaware, had been in the city.