Mother, daughter duo knew of the dangers before a deadly butt-lift went wrong, prosecutors say

When a mother and daughter duo from Riverside administered a lethal dose of injectable silicone into 26-year-old Karissa Rajpaul's buttocks at a home in Sherman Oaks in October 2019, killing her within hours of the procedure, the adverse results she showed almost immediately should not have come as a surprise, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Rajpaul stopped breathing and began to lose consciousness after the pair — 53-year-old Libby Adame and 26-year-old Alicia Galaz — stuck two syringes into her backside, pressing the plungers several times to inject her with the liquid that was supposed to prompt the growth of fat cells in her butt cheeks, making them look fuller.

Paramedics who arrived at the home after a companion of Rajpaul called 911 had little idea of what was happening to her. After bringing her to a hospital, Rajpaul stopped breathing and died.

Adame and Galaz should have known Rajpaul's death was possible, prosecutors said inside the Los Angeles courtroom where the first day of the pair's murder trial played out Tuesday, because they had seen it happen before.

Galaz had been on hand for the death of another woman, Karina Arias, a little more than a year before, said Deputy District Attorney Lee Cernok. Arias died after getting the same procedure at a salon in South Gate, Cernok said. Security

camera footage showed Galaz arriving at the salon that day; the footage also showed her waiting with an associate in the salon's rear parking lot as paramedics rushed in the front, finding Arias unconscious and unsuccessfully attempting to revive her.

Cernok revealed the other woman's death in her opening statements Tuesday as she sought to show the jury of 10 men and six women that both Adame, known as “La Tia” on social me