FAR ROCKAWAY — A Maryland woman who traveled to Queens for a cosmetic butt injection went into cardiac arrest and died, sources said.
The illegal practioner who provided the service fled soon after and has not been found by police.
Kelly Mayhew, 34, traveled from Maryland to the home on Dickens Street in Far Rockaway on May 30 for the procedure, usually used to insert silicon implants, police said.
The injection was carried out in a makeshift medical room in the basement, police and sources said.
The home's owner, Joan Doyle, 45, said Tuesday she rented an upstairs apartment to a woman she had worked with a year-and-a-half ago, but in January the woman said she couldn't afford the rent.
She asked for a different place to stay and Doyle — who said she wanted to help her out while she got back on her feet — let her live in the basement of her large home.
That's when random young women started filtering in and out of the basement's side entrance, she said.
The tenant said they were her friends, but Doyle and her family were alarmed by the stream of women coming by each day, she said.
"I thought something was going on, too much women were coming back and forth," she said.
Doyle told her tenant she had to be out of the house by June 1 and most of her things were packed up in her car on May 30, she said.
But that afternoon Doyle, who works in a nearby nursing home, heard loud screams from a middle-aged woman outside her home.
When she went outside she saw one of her tenant's friends, who she knew as Donna, whispering to the woman as she screamed for help for her daughter, she said.
An ambulance arrived shortly after and Mayhew was brought out on a stretcher.
Donna, who Doyle said she knew by her BMW truck she often parked outside, left before police arrived.
Police sources said they're trying to track her down and believe she was providing illegal butt injections to women who came to the basement for procedures.
It's not clear what the original tenant's involvement was, but Doyle said she was at work when the victim died.
Investigators told Doyle about the "illegal cosmetics" in her basement.
The large room she let her co-worker stay had an old medical bed inside, Doyle said.
The women who came through the side entrance to the basement had one thing in common.
"Some of [the women] had weird butts. I knew something was going on but I couldn't put my finger on it," she said.
Donna, who Doyle said was very petite, also had a "big butt."
"I thought, 'why is she so small and why is her butt looking like that?'"
An NYPD spokeswoman said they are still investigating the incident, but it's the latest in a number of deadly and dangerous butt injections around the city.
In July 2013, a 22-year-old mother, Tamara Blaine, died after she was injected with silicone implants — and the illegal doctor who provided the procedure left her writhing and foaming at the mouth for 90 minutes before calling for help, sources said.
In 2014, a 41-year-old woman was busted for injecting patients with a clear gel-like substance she called "expandable cells" inside a Flushing home, according to the Queens DA's office.
