Britt Jones
A woman has died following a botched butt implant removal job from an unlicensed Queens man.
Maria Penaloza Cabrera passed away on April 11, weeks after the procedure at her home on March 28 this year, according to a GoFundMe update posted by the woman’s family.
The botched job is said to have been carried out by Felipe Hoyos-Foronda, 38, who was caught by the authorities after trying to flee the country.
The man, who is a native of Colombia, ran an allegedly unlicensed clinic on 35th Street in Astoria, as per police.
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Court papers filed on April 2 claimed that Cabrera visited his clinic for a butt implant removal procedure at 1.00pm on March 30, where Hoyos-Foronda allegedly administered lidocaine to her via a syringe.
It was this drug that caused her to go into cardiac arrest, according to the complaint filed to the Queens Criminal Court.
When things went wrong, that’s when the ‘doctor’ left her and fled to a nearby airport, ready to leave the country.
The victim was rushed to Mount Sinai Queens hospital as Hoyos-Foronda is said to have made a call to the emergency services before fleeing.
The complaint states the woman was intubated with no brain activity and appeared to show symptoms of ‘lidocaine toxicity’, which as per the National Institutes of Health, which can present with mild to life-threatening side effects such as ‘restlessness’ or even a coma or death.
Once police arrived to the property where the woman lay, they talked to the landlord, who gave them Hoyos-Foronda’s image, and after tracking his license plate, they found that he had fled to the Van Wyck Expressway.
Following his trail, the Port Authority police apprehended him at JFK Airport where he had purchased a ticket to Colombia.
He was then arrested and charged with second-degree assault and unauthorized practice of a profession, and then held without bail during his arraignment two days later.
UNILAD previously contacted the New York City Police Department for comment.
At the time of his arraignment, Cabrera was unconscious, but sadly, she has since passed away due to her condition.
Authorities have now revealed that Hoyos-Foronda advertised his unlicensed practice on TikTok, showing off his price list for procedures, including Botox, and sharing his before and after results from past patients.
While the exact cause of death is yet to be revealed, the Chief Medical Examiner is undertaking an investigation into what occurred.
The GoFundMe page set up by her family has raised just over $6,413 out of its $20,000 goal to help her relatives travel to the US from Colombia and to also pay for her funeral costs.
The page also notes that she was a mother of two, and leaves behind young children.
A translated version of the GoFundMe post shares how her family did not have enough time to fly to see her before she was disconnected from her life-support machine.
A portion of it reads: “Today, Friday, April 11, the doctors have made the decision to disconnect her, without giving time for her family in Colombia — her parents and her eldest son — to travel to say goodbye to her and give her the goodbye she deserves.
“For this reason, we make an urgent appeal for empathy, solidarity and humanity: we beg that a humanitarian visa be granted to her parents and her eldest son, who today only want to arrive in time to accompany her in her last moment.”