A British woman who was extradited to New York from the United Kingdom has been sentenced to a year in prison for performing a botched butt lift that killed a TV producer in 2015.
Donna Francis burst into tears in court on Thursday when Queens Supreme Court Judge Kenneth Holder handed down the sentence a month after the woman pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death of Kelly Mayhew.
Mayhew, 34, died from ‘systemic silicone emboli’, which is when silicone enters the bloodstream, in May 2015 after she and her mother drove from Maryland to Queens for the procedure.
Francis was initially indicted in 2016 for the death of Mayhew, a television producer who paid $1,600 to have the procedure in the basement of Francis’ Queens home.
As per the terms of her extradition, she was given no more than a year in prison, something that Judge Holder and family members of Mayhew called an injustice.
British woman, Donna Francis (pictured in court Thursday), 39, who was extradited to New York from the UK is sentenced to a year in prison for performing a botched butt lift on TV producer, Kelly Mayhew who died in 2015
Francis (left) burst into tears in court when Queens Supreme Court Judge Kenneth Holder (right) handed down the sentence a month after the woman pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide in the death of Mayhew
Mayhew’s mother, Latrice, looked stone-faced in court after the lenient sentence
Kelly Mayhew (pictured), 34, died from ‘systemic silicone emboli’, which is when silicone enters the bloodstream, in May 2015 after she and her mother drove from Maryland to Queens for the procedure
‘I have to say that the phrase “getting away with murder” certainly applies to you,’ Holder told the fake doctor during her sentencing, according to the New York Post.
‘What [the family] is not getting, in my opinion, is justice,’ Holder said. ‘If you have a conscience, this is going to haunt you much longer than the 1-year sentence you’re going to serve.’
Mayhew’s mother, Latrice, told the Post: ‘If you can sleep on the fact that you just killed someone…then you don’t care. She got away with murder.’
Francis could be free by mid-April with time served.
Mayhew’s brother, Richard Lane, also told the newspaper that his sister ‘died for greed. A life lost for money’.
During the sentencing, Lane read a statement on behalf of their mother, which said that Francis would not tell his mother the address to give responders when she called 911.
‘Kelly was clearly in need of emergency services and she said, “No, she’s going to be okay,”‘ Lane read to the court.
‘Kelly’s last words to my mother were, “Mommy, hold my hand,”‘ Lane said.
The extradition order also requires that Francis serve her sentence in Suffolk County, Long Island, rather than the notorious Rikers Island detention facility.
Acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan said Francis injected Mayhew’s buttocks with silicone gel purchased from eBay in the basement of her home in the Far Rockaway neighborhood on May 30, 2015.
Authorities said Mayhew ‘went into cardiac arrest’ as Francis ‘pumped a clear liquid substance into the woman’s backside’. Mayhew (pictured) began showing signs of distress after her second injection of silicone
The botched procedure was performed in the basement of Francis’ home in Far Rockaway, Queens (above)
Authorities say the silicone entered Mayhew’s bloodstream and killed her.
According to Ryan, Francis used a ‘massage table for an examination table and silicone gel that had been purchased from the website Ebay’.
Ryan said Mayhew ‘went into cardiac arrest’ as Francis ‘pumped a clear liquid substance into the woman’s backside’.
A day after Mayhew’s death, Francis fled to London and was extradited in August.
Francis fought extradition to the US, but a British judge ruled in October that the severity of the crime necessitated that the mother-of-one be sent to New York for trial.
According to authorities, Mayhew began showing signs of distress after she was administered a second injection.
Her mother, who was with her at the time, dialed 911. Emergency responders found Mayhew lying unresponsive face up at the bottom of the stairs.
She was rushed to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The medical examiner determined that the official cause of death was systemic silicone emboli.
Francis’ daughter will be cared for by her maternal grandmother during the course of her sentence.