Make wishtv.com your home page

Police suspect woman died from cosmetic buttock injections

EDMUNDSON, Mo. (AP) – Police investigating the death of a woman due to complications from illegal buttocks injections at a suburban St. Louis hotel room are trying to determine if her demise can be linked to a similar fatal case months ago in Texas.

Miklos Hurocy, police chief of tiny Edmundson abutting Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, said officers probing Daysha Phillips’ death last week are awaiting a medical examiner’s report to identify the substance that was injected into the 22-year-old Florissant woman.

That report could come within three weeks.

Phillips had trouble breathing after the procedure July 26 and was rushed by relatives to a hospital. Her condition rapidly declined, and she was taken off life support July 30.

Three other women were with her during the injections, Hurocy said. Investigators have not identified two women, both potential suspects, in the Missouri death, the chief said.

In Dallas, Wykesha Reid, 34, died in February from what authorities said was a blocked lung artery linked to illegal silicone injections meant to expand her buttocks. Two salon workers have been charged with murder, but at least one of them was free on bond when the Missouri case surfaced.

“I’m feeling it is one and the same,” Hurocy told the Dallas Morning News this week of the Dallas and Edmunson cases. “That’s pretty much what we’re thinking.”

Dallas police Maj. Jeff Cotner told the Dallas newspaper that Edmundson authorities have contacted his department’s detectives, given the “similarities between the cases.” He said Dallas investigators are assisting Edmunson police.

The Associated Press left a message Thursday seeking comment from Hurocy.

Deaths from illegal buttocks injections have been cropping up across the country.

North Carolina authorities charged Vinnie Taylor with second-degree murder in January in connection with the buttocks injection death of a woman who died in March 2014. On Monday, Taylor was indicted on federal charges alleging he sold and injected food grade liquid silicone into people. Prosecutors allege he injected seven women with silicone between September 2013 and September 2014.

In June, a former Philadelphia madam who performed illegal “body sculpting” was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison in the death of a dancer whose heart stopped after nearly half a gallon of silicone was injected into her buttocks. Padge-Victoria Windslowe told jurors at her murder trial that clients called her “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections.” But prosecutors say she had no medical training and used deadly products on vulnerable women, including fellow members of the transgender community who wanted curves.

Crime Map
Use Search Bars Above To Search Crime Data