US & Canada

US silicone death: Briton Donna Francis sentenced to year in jail

Kelly Mayhew Image copyright Facebook
Image caption Kelly Mayhew died in 2015 after a botched operation

A British woman convicted of killing a US patient by giving her botched buttock-enhancement injections has been sentenced to a year in New York jail.

Donna Francis had pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide for the 2015 death of Kelly Mayhew after she was extradited from the UK in August.

Francis was given the maximum sentence allowed in the extradition agreement.

"The phrase 'getting away with murder' certainly applies to you," New York Judge Kenneth Holder said on Thursday.

"If you have a conscience, this is going to haunt you much longer than the one-year sentence you're going to serve."

Francis, 39, who is originally from Loughton, Essex, was sentenced in the Queens Supreme Court in New York for causing the death of Mayhew in May 2015.

At her sentencing, Francis was in tears, and said she regretted the incident.

"It wasn't my intention to hurt anyone," she said. "I'm sorry for all the years this has been going on. I'm just sorry."

Mayhew and her mother had travelled to New York from Maryland to pay Francis - who has no medical licence - $1,600 (£1,200) for a buttock enhancement procedure.

Mayhew went into cardiac arrest after the botched silicone injections were administered in the basement of a house.

Her brother, who read a statement on behalf of their mother in court, said Francis had refused to call 911 or provide an address to give first responders, the New York Post reported.

Mayhew eventually died from systemic silicone emboli, when the unencapsulated silicone entered her bloodstream and caused an embolism, the medical examiner found.

Prosecutors said Francis had left the dying woman and her mother and fled to London, where she remained until the extradition deal was reached this summer.

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