Couple Arrested in Baby’s Vodka Death

A couple from Fort Lauderdale who are accused of killing their infant daughter by giving her formula mixed with vodka walked into the headquarters of the Trenton Police Department in New Jersey on Thursday afternoon and asked to speak to an officer.

“They basically conveyed the information that they were staying with a relative and it was important that they call Det. [John] Curcio in Fort Lauderdale,” said Trenton Police spokesman Peter Page. “They didn’t say why.”

As Mackenson Dantus, 25, and Mardala Derival, 22, sat reading a Bible, police found out that they had been wanted for more than a month by the Fort Lauderdale Police Department on aggravated manslaughter charges in the death of their 3-month-old daughter, Makeisha.

“They seemed pretty docile, not agitated,” Page said. “They were really not distinguishable from somebody coming to make a report.”

Detectives with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s fugitive unit had spoken with the couple Thursday morning and persuaded them to stop running, said Elizabeth Calzadilla-Fiallo, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office.

Makeisha was found on Valentine’s Day 2004, dead after ingesting sugar water and formula mixed with vodka, according to a medical examiner’s report. The report said that Dantus and Derival had given the infant the vodka because she suffered from fevers and colic.

The vodka raised the child’s blood-alcohol level to a deadly .47. The state considers drivers illegally impaired at .08.

By the time a warrant was secured for the couple’s arrest in October this year, police had lost track of them.

The FBI had joined the search Tuesday, adding charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Those charges are likely to be dropped because the couple turned themselves in, said FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela.

It was the sheriff’s office that ended the search.

Detectives with the fugitive unit were taking a federal prisoner to Miami when they stopped by an old address the couple once shared, Calzadilla-Fiallo said. Relatives at the home provided Dantus’ cellphone number.

“We spoke to them for an extended period of time and convinced them that they need to turn themselves in,” Calzadilla-Fiallo said. “Our fugitive squad detectives did a good job of convincing them that this was the best thing for everyone involved.”

The couple awaits extradition to Broward County. They both face up to 30 years in prison on the first-degree felony charges.