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Accused dealer took ferry, brought children on drug buy, police say

NEW YORK — A New York man accused for his part in a heroin and fentanyl distribution ring commuted from the Bronx to Staten Island to sell the illicit drugs -- and took his children on a drug buy, police said.

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Steven Ildefonso was one of six suspects arrested and indicted Thursday, the New York Daily News reported.

ldefonso, 40, once served time as a juvenile offender for his role in the 1991 robbery and murder of a Staten Island restaurateur, SILive reported. Two other men arrested were from Staten Island -- Peter Faustin, 59, and Anthony DeVito, 38, officials said.

“Ildefonso, who resides in the Bronx, regularly commuted by ferry to the St. George terminal, where he would be picked up by car and driven to conduct drug business,” a spokeswoman for Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said in a statement.

According to authorities, on Feb.1, 2018, Ildefonso allegedly sold more than 1,000 glassines of heroin for $6,000 cash in the Bronx. Authorities said Ildefonso even brought his three children with him to at least one drug deal in April during which he and two associates met with an undercover officer to set up a cocaine buy, the Daily News reported. The children sat at a table at a Bronx Applebee's while Ildefonso met with the officer at the bar, the newspaper reported.

“He put a sinister spin on `Take your Kids to Work Day’ when he brought his children along for a meal at Applebee’s while he conducted a drug transaction at the bar,” Brennan said.

About a week later, police arrested Ildefonso at his Bronx apartment and recovered drugs from a closet used by his twin daughters, who were home at the time, the Daily News reported.