A Queens mom left brain dead after a botched butt procedure by an unlicensed doctor has died after being removed from a ventilator two weeks later, the Daily News has learned.
María Paz Peñaloza Cabrera, 31, went to the doctor’s Astoria home March 28 to get troublesome butt implants removed, authorities say. She ended up going into cardiac arrest after being injected with lidocaine, commonly used in plastic surgery as a local anesthetic to numb specific areas, according to prosecutors.
“We never imagined this would happen,” the victim’s sister, Linney Peñaloza Cabrera, 34, told the Daily News in Spanish. “A friend who went with María called and said she was taken away in an ambulance but she didn’t know how bad it was.”
“She went there because a friend had already gone there for an operation and recommended him,” she added. “From the time the ambulance came and while she was in the hospital [doctors] were trying to revive her for two-and-a-half hours.”
The sister said Peñaloza Cabrera, the mother of two sons, ages 3 and 1, never regained consciousness.
Prosecutors say Peñaloza Cabrera suffered lidocaine toxicity, a condition that occurs when excessive amounts of the anesthetic enter the bloodstream, which can lead to seizures, irregular heart rhythms and in severe cases respiratory failure or cardiac arrest.
When FDNY medics saw the makeshift office in Felipe Hoyos-Foronda’s house on 35th St. near 20th Road they requested police respond. Hoyos-Foronda was not licensed to perform the procedure, cops say.
As medics rushed Peñaloza Cabrera to the hospital, Hoyos-Foronda sped off to JFK Airport, where his license plate was captured on the Van Wyck Expressway, according to police sources.
Officers from the Port Authority Police Department arrested him inside after he had already passed through security, telling authorities he was a licensed doctor in Colombia, sources said.
Now relatives in New York and Colombia are mourning the bright entrepreneurial woman who her sister said dreamed of becoming a beautician and sold tamales and empanadas in the neighborhood during summer months. The victim always hosted Christmas in her Flushing home.
“Maria was a very happy person, very family oriented,” the sister said. “She always wanted to be around us at her home. We’d always spend the holidays at her place.”
“It’s never easy to say goodbye,” the victim’s brother-in-law wrote in Spanish on Facebook. “Your absence hurts, but your memory is light. We keep every shared laugh, every gesture of love, every conversation that we now treasure.”
Hoyos-Foronda was arraigned on charges of assault and unauthorized practice of a profession in Queens Criminal Court in March and is being held without bail at Rikers Island.
Prosecutors are reevaluating the charges in the wake of Peñaloza Cabrera’s death.
“Whenever circumstances change in a case we re-examine the charges,” said a spokesman from the Queens District Attorney’s Office. “This remains an active and ongoing investigation.”
Peñaloza Cabrera, who emigrated to the United States from Villavicencio, Colombia in 2022, also leaves behind family in her birth country who did not get to say their goodbyes, despite seeking help with an emergency visa from the Colombian embassy.
“Doctors decided to disconnect her, without allowing time for her family in Colombia — her parents and eldest son — to travel to say goodbye and give her the farewell she deserves,” reads a GoFundMe post to raise money for Peñaloza Cabrera’s family.
Hoyos-Foronda is due back in Queens Criminal Court April 28.
