Philly woman’s death from butt injections investigated as homicide

The case of a North Philadelphia woman who died from silicone cosmetic injections in New York over the summer is being investigated as a homicide, according to the New York Police Department.

Police found Lesbia Ayala, 48, of the 2500 block of North Bouvier Street, in cardiac arrest after responding to a “call of an aided female” at an address in the Bronx in June. Ayala was taken to Jacobi Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, according to police.

The medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide on Dec. 1, with systemic silicone embolism syndrome caused by cosmetic silicone injections of the buttocks and thighs listed as the manner of death, officials said Tuesday. It’s not clear when she received the injections, according to the Associated Press.

No arrests have been made in the case.

The case isn’t the only one of its kind, however. In 2015, a Common Pleas judge sentenced Padge-Victoria Windslowe, who injected silicone into peoples' butts and is better known as the “Black Madam,” to 10 to 20 years in prison and six years of probation after the death of one woman and injuries to another.

Windslowe was convicted of third-degree murder in the 2011 death of 20-year-old Claudia Aderotimi, who traveled to Philly from England to receive the injections. Another woman, Sherkeeia King, had to be hospitalized after attending a “pumping party” in East Germantown in 2012.

“I never knew the dangers of this,” Windslowe said at her sentencing hearing. “I did this to myself and to my friends.”

At a pretrial hearing, Windslowe said that others called her “the Michelangelo of buttocks injections.”

An investigation into Ayala’s death is ongoing, according to New York authorities.