A Riverside mother-daughter duo on trial for the death of a Reseda woman who died after they performed a butt-lift on her in October 2019 were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Monday, March 4.
Libby Adame, 53, and Alicia Galaz, 26 both faced second-degree murder charges over the death of Karissa Rajpaul inside a Sherman Oaks home where they injected her with liquid silicone, sending the chemical into her bloodstream and causing an embolism that killed her.
But the jury returned the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter for both women.
The option was available to the jury if they found Adame and Galaz did not show malice when injecting Rajpaul, but still assigned them guilt for her death.
The pair also was found guilty of charges of performing a medical procedure without a license. Adame was found guilty of three such counts; Galaz, two.
The jury reached their verdict after deliberating for about seven hours.
The case, which included about a week’s worth of witness testimony last month, revolved around whether or not Adame, also known as “La Tia” to her fans on social media, and Galaz knew how deadly the silicone they injected into their clients could be.
The pair operated their business offering butt-lifts to women around L.A. County for about a decade before their arrest in 2021, two years after Rajpaul died inside the Sherman Oaks home owned by a companion of hers.
Rajpaul had gotten two previous silicone injections from Adame and Galaz without incident. But during the third, Rajpaul suddenly began to lose consciousness. Both women left the home after paramedics arrived — Rajpaul was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where she died.
The procedures — also known as Brazilian butt lifts, which involve using syringes to inject the liquid silicone into a customer’s upper buttocks, promoting the growth of fat cells — are popular in Central and South America, but carry extreme risks, according to U.S. regulators.
Silicone injections are not approved for use in the United States. The FDA has warned against them since at least 2017.
Prosecutors said Adame and Galaz offered the butt lifts to hundreds of customers. They argued the women should have known the dangers of silicone injections because Galaz was present when another woman, Kenia Arias, died at a South Gate salon in 2018 from the same type of procedure.
But the duo’s attorneys argued neither Adame nor Galaz had much knowledge of what actually caused Arias’ death, saying they were not present when two of their associates administered the silicone to Arias. Galaz was still at the salon when paramedics arrived to take Arias to a hospital.
During his closing argument, Nareg Gourjian, an attorney for Galaz, said the women had no malice toward Rajpaul and that her death was a tragic accident.
“Do you think killing people is a way to build a successful business?” he said. “They wanted to do a good job.”