A Mount Vernon woman has been arrested more than four years after a 53-year-old Bridgeport, Connecticut woman was dropped off unresponsive at a Bronx hospital with needle marks on her body. Alicia Leslie, 47 — whose first name is spelled Alica in some police-sourced reporting — now faces charges of criminally negligent homicide and unauthorized practice of a profession in the death of Maxine Messam.
Messam was dropped off at New York City Health+Hospitals/Jacobi just before 2 a.m. on February 15, 2022, according to PIX11. Police said two women brought her in, and authorities stated she was missing her pants and had multiple injections to her buttocks when she arrived. She was pronounced dead at the hospital that same day.
Additional details reported by the New York Daily News fill in more of what happened that night. Messam, of Bridgeport, was dumped at Jacobi naked from the waist down, with needle marks visible on her body, and doctors found that a foreign substance had been injected into her buttocks. The two women reportedly drove Messam to the hospital in her own BMW SUV and then walked off, leaving the vehicle behind.
Women Told Hospital They Found Her at a Cemetery
According to the same account, the two women who brought Messam in told hospital staff they had found her in distress at Woodlawn Cemetery and wanted to help her. Police became involved after the hospital called 911 at 1:51 a.m., shortly after Messam died, the outlet reported at the time. Authorities launched an investigation into whether Messam had been undergoing an unauthorized butt lift when something went wrong, though the evidence gathered so far does not establish a final cause of death.
Leslie was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Supreme Court and released without bail, per the same account. Her attorney said she denies the allegations and expects to be exonerated. The NYPD has not provided further details on the case to PIX11.
Case Echoes Earlier New York Butt-Injection Deaths
Messam's death is not the first in New York tied to buttocks injections performed outside licensed medical settings. In June 2018, Leslie Ayala died from an illegal buttocks injection, the Daily News reported. And in 2017, Latesha Bynum died after receiving silicone injections from someone claiming to be a doctor; Kevin Richardson, the phony physician who performed the procedure, later pleaded guilty to charges including second-degree manslaughter and unauthorized practice of a profession and was sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.
Under New York Penal Law § 125.10, a person is guilty of criminally negligent homicide when, with criminal negligence, that person causes the death of another, according to the New York State Senate. It remains unclear how prosecutors plan to connect that standard to the circumstances surrounding Messam's death, and the identity and status of the second woman who allegedly helped bring her to the hospital have not been disclosed.
