The founder of a back-alley Bronx wellness clinic has been arrested on depraved indifference homicide charges for killing a woman during a botched unlicensed medical procedure, cops said Tuesday.
Luis Rojas Cabrera, 55, was hit with the additional charge for performing the deadly “anti-aging” procedure that ended in 27-year-old Elizabeth Baron’s death. He had previously been charged with reckless endangerment and unauthorized practice in connection with the fatal procedure, officials said.
The new criminal charges come after Baron’s death was ruled a homicide, officials said.
Baron died as a result of a cardiac air embolism caused by the procedure on July 19 at Bereshit Lifestyle Center on Riverdale Ave. near W. 232nd St., according to the city’s Medical Examiner.
Baron immediately went into medical distress soon after Cabrera, the clinic’s founder, injected her right hand with nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+, which is marketed as an “anti-aging therapy solution,” according to authorities.
Cabrera called an ambulance, and Baron was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital, but medics were unable to revive her.
Cabrera was licensed in his native Dominican Republic but not in the U.S. After his arraignment on reckless endangerment charges, he was released without bail and ordered to surrender his passport.
At his arraignment, prosecutors said he told cops he made “a very big mistake.”
The suspect’s attorney, Donald Vogelman, last month said the medical examiner’s determination should have no bearing on the case against his client.
“The legal definition of homicide is the taking of a person’s life, regardless of the intent or circumstances surrounding the death. This means homicide is not necessarily a murder but might be caused by an accident,” Vogelman said. “If there was a homicide in this case, it’s clearly an accident.
“My client, Mr. Cabrera, will be fully exonerated in court,” he said.
The Bronx clinic’s website, which remained online more than a month after Baron received the fatal procedure, describes Cabrera as “an active surgeon and Naturopath in the Dominican Republic and an alternative and holistic medicine (practitioner) in the United States.”
The unlicensed wellness clinic founder was arrested twice in November at Newark Liberty International Airport arriving back from the D.R., first for possession of a metal baton, and, four days later, for almost 200 vials of prescription medications, 30 tablets, and 10 syringes of lidocaine, an anesthetic.
The cases were later downgraded and dismissed.