A bogus Queens doctor who admitted his botched butt implant procedure killed his patient, a mother of two, last year was sentenced on Thursday to five to 15 years in prison.
Felipe Hoyos-Foronda pleaded guilty to a manslaughter charge months after his patient, María Paz Peñaloza Cabrera, 31, died following a bungled procedure in Hoyos-Foronda’s Astoria home.
According to prosecutors, Peñaloza Cabrera died weeks after she had a bad reaction to anesthesia she was administered ahead of the unauthorized procedure.
After failing to revive her, Hoyos-Foronda fled the home and was captured hours later at John F. Kennedy Airport as he waited for a getaway flight to his native Colombia.
Peñaloza Cabrera dreamed of becoming a beautician and sold tamales and empanadas in her Flushing neighborhood during summer months, relatives said.
The victim’s heartbroken husband, Theodore Paloumbas, watched along with grieving relatives as Hoyos-Foronda learned his fate Thursday.
“Every day, I carry the pain of losing my wife while trying to be the best father I can be,” he said in a victim’s impact statement read by a prosecutor.
”I have to raise our son alone while grieving the woman we both love. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what our lives should have been and everything she has missed. No sentence can bring my wife back. Nothing can replace the future that was stolen from her.”
A search of Hoyos-Foronda’s car at the time found evidence of his illegal medical practice: a garbage bag with a bloody syringe, more used syringes, an empty bottle of lidocaine and empty bottles of human growth hormone and other medications, prosecutors said.
While Hoyos-Foronda stood in an airport Starbucks line, Peñaloza Cabrera was suffering lidocaine toxicity, a condition that occurs when excessive amounts of the anesthetic enter the bloodstream, causing seizures, irregular heart rhythm, respiratory failure or cardiac arrest.
She died two weeks later after being removed from a ventilator. She had visited Hoyos-Foronda to have a problematic butt implant removed.
“Felipe Hoyos-Foronda – who had no business practicing as a doctor or surgeon – ended the life of a young mother when he gave her a lethal dose of anesthesia and then attempted to flee the country,” Queens DA Melissa Katz said in a statement. “Today’s sentence cannot undo this tragedy, but we hope it brings a measure of solace to Maria Penaloza’s loved ones as they continue to grieve her senseless loss.”
The procedure was performed in a makeshift office in Hoyos-Foronda’s house on 35th St. near 20th Road, authorities said
He was asked if he wanted to say anything before he was sentenced, but he declined.