A Los Angeles jury will soon decide whether a Riverside mother-daughter duo whose botched butt-lift procedure in October 2019 led to the death of Reseda woman bent on enhancing her looks were so negligent in injecting their client with liquid silicone that their actions were tantamount to murder, or whether her death was simply the result of a mistake.
According to an L.A. County prosecutor, Libby Adame, 56, and her daughter Alicia Galaz, 26, should have understood the danger when they stuck two syringes into each of 26-year-old Karissa Rajpaul’s butt cheeks and pressed down on the plungers, injecting her with the chemical typically used to prevent metal from rusting in an attempt to promote the growth of fat cells, but instead nicking a vein and sending the silicone surging into her blood stream, eventually clogging her lungs and brain, causing an embolism that quickly killed her.
The pair knew that act carried an extreme risk, Deputy District Attorney Lee Cernok said, because both were aware of the death of a woman in South Gate the year before from the exact same procedure carried out by two other women they worked with — Galaz was at the scene when paramedics arrived to rush Kenia Arias to a hospital after she received a silicon injection at a salon on Paramount Boulevard in August 2018.
Like a game of a game of Russian roulette, Cernok said, injecting people with liquid silicone carries the possibility of death every time the largely underground procedure is performed.
“These ladies were rolling that barrel every time they showed up with that toxic silicone,” Cernok said.
According to both of their attorneys, however, Adame and Galaz were offering a highly sought-after treatment for women across Southern California and were themselves the victims of overzealous police and prosecutors seeking to make an example of them for what amounted to a tragic accident.
“Do you think killing people is a way to build a successful business?” said Nareg…
Read the full article here
