Unlicensed Beautician Faces Sentencing In Fatal Butt Injection
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) – An unlicensed beautician who pleaded guilty to killing a woman with a botched buttocks injection in a Queens basement in 2015 will be sentenced Thursday.
Donna Francis, 39, fled to England but was extradited in August and arraigned on charges including criminally negligent homicide.
Francis injected 34-year-old Kelly Mayhew in a Queens basement in May 2015. Mayhew had traveled from Maryland for the procedure.
"The defendant set up shop in the basement of a Far Rockaway home using a massage table for an examination table and silicone gel that had been purchased from the website Ebay," said Acting District Attorney John M. Ryan. "The victim in this case traveled from Maryland with her mother and paid $1,600 cash for the injections. Sadly, the treatment killed her."
Francis is expected to be sentenced to up to a year in jail, per the extradition order, which limited her incarceration to no more than one year.
According to the district attorney's office, as part of the terms of the extradition agreement, Francis will be held in Suffolk County and not at Rikers Island.
FLASHBACK: Maryland Woman Dies After Receiving Injections In Buttocks
Authorities say that Francis was not a licensed nurse or physician, and that Mayhew died because the procedure wasn't done properly.
While the victim's mother called 911, the woman performing the procedure took off in a gray SUV.
Mayhew was pronounced dead on arrival at St. John's Hospital.
Illicit silicone injections have caused multiple deaths in the United States.
In March 2018, 46-year-old Allison Spence was sentenced to two to eight years in prison for the death of Harlem mother Latesha Bynum in another botched butt injection in 2017.
Spence was also running an unlicensed clinic in Queens.
(© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
