Parents of Woman Who Died After Cosmetic Enhancement Want Murder Charges
A young New York mother is dead and her family is demanding answers after she received injections to enhance her buttocks, CBS News reports. Latesha Bynum, 32, went to a “doctor” practicing out of an apartment in the Gramercy Park neighborhood in New York. Within hours of having the procedure, Ms. Bynum had to be hospitalized.
Her brother Tymel told CBS News, "After the procedure, something was wrong with my sister. I think her feet and stuff was blue," Tymel said. "She went to the hospital and couldn't breathe and whatever was in her went to her head. She was brain dead and she had zero chance to basically come back from it."
According to ABC News, Ms. Bynum’s family has filed wrongful death lawsuit. The family’s attorney told ABC that the man who gave Ms. Bynum her injections was not a qualified doctor.
Silicone is used in many medical settings, but injecting liquid silicone directly into soft tissue is prohibited by all medical practices due to the inherent danger posed by silicone’s migration through and interaction with soft tissue and vital organs. In Respiratory Disease following Illicit Injection of Silicone: A Case Report, Alex Charles Essenmacher and Seyed Amin Astani explain that symptoms of respiratory illness resulting from silicone injections “resemble acute respiratory distress syndrome and bronchiolitis obliterans organizing pneumonia.”
Essenmacher and Astani also describe how illicit silicone injections manifested in the case study patient they treated: “The biopsy of our patient revealed silicone infiltration with subsequent spillage into alveolar spaces. The response induced is similar to the injury pattern seen in exogenous lipoid pneumonia, a pathology traditionally resulting from inhalation of oily (liquid fat) substances.”
This latest case mirrors a 2015 death, when BET employee Kelly Mayhew died after receiving cosmetic injections. According to the New York Daily News, Ms. Mayhew had an almost immediate reaction to the treatment, subsequently the “doctor” who treated her fled.
BET reports that New York authorities are now treating Mayhew’s death as a homicide. According to BET Mayhew became ill almost instantly. “Mayhew arrived with her mother to the ‘doctor's’ home to receive the injections. Mayhew reacted immediately and began to gurgle and struggle to breathe.”
The New York Daily News reports that charges are currently being considered, and the “doctor,” who fled to the United Kingdom after running out on her patient, will face extradition if charges are filed against her.