Dallas Woman Found Dead After Receiving Black-Market Butt Injections
A 34-year-old woman was found dead at a Dallas salon Feb. 19 after receiving what family members said was her fourth black-market butt injection, the Dallas News reported this week.
Wykesha Reid, a mother who worked at a nursing home, "got hooked on them booty shots," according to Patricia Kelley, the woman who raised her. Even though her butt was "getting too big," Kelley said, Reid went back for more at the Deep Ellum salon where her body was eventually found.
Kelley said the salon had been "cleaned out," and Reid's phone and wallet had been taken. Apparently, no one inside called 911.
Police are now searching for salon owners Denise Ross, 43, and Jimmy Clarke, 31, (a.k.a. Alicia)—not in connection with Reid's death, but on charges of practicing medicine without a license in a separate case that came to light later, in which, the Dallas News reports, "a woman who received butt injections suffered pain, soreness and psychological problems but survived."
According to the warrant, the woman "was told to be quiet after screaming in agony."
The alleged black-market butt-injectors could still be charged in Reid's death, authorities say, but that depends on toxicology results that are still weeks away.
The Dallas News spoke to former clients of the pair who said they ran a well-known, professional operation injecting hydrogel into the asses of local exotic dancers, then sealing their work with super glue. They said doses cost between $300 and $500, and the procedure lasted from 15 to 45 minutes.
Underground butt-enhancement operations are not uncommon, and neither are deaths—and other gruesome consequences—from botched procedures.
One of the 30(!) victims of an unlicensed Florida butt-doctor, who was disfigured but survived, explained that such operations tend to target trans people:
"It becomes so dire that you want to match your outside with your inside that you're willing to roll the dice and take your chances. As a transgender person, you're thinking, 'Oh, my God, I can start to look like I want to look like and I don't have to spend a lot of money,'" Rajee Narinesingh said in 2011.
Ross and Clarke's clients told the Dallas News that their procedures were popular with "dancers and trans women."
