Alicia Leslie

Introduction

Alicia Leslie, a 47-year-old Mount Vernon, New York woman also known as “Toya,” was arrested and charged more than four and a half years after a Bridgeport, Connecticut mother died following what investigators describe as a back-alley silicone butt-injection procedure — a February 2022 session after which the victim, Maxine Messam, 53, was dumped unconscious and half-naked at a Bronx hospital by two women who claimed they had found her near a cemetery. Leslie faces charges of criminally negligent homicide and unauthorized practice of a profession; according to the criminal complaint, she injected Messam with “a silicone substance” despite holding no medical or cosmetology license. She was arraigned in Bronx criminal court, pleaded not guilty, and was released under supervision.

Background Information

Maxine Messam was a 53-year-old Bridgeport resident, a Connecticut state employee whom friends described as a devoted wife and mother who “lit the room with her presence.” Leslie had no professional credential to perform cosmetic injections that authorities referenced; the case is part of what federal agencies describe as a rise in fake practitioners performing illicit silicone injections in New York, Florida, Texas, and California — injections that have killed at least a dozen people in recent years. The February 15, 2022 procedure was allegedly arranged by text: law-enforcement sources said investigators found a message exchange between Leslie and Messam planning to meet in Yonkers for the procedure that day.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Charged, not convicted. Leslie faces criminally negligent homicide and unauthorized-practice charges; she has pleaded not guilty and has not been tried. The charges are accusations, and she is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Just before 2 a.m. on February 15, 2022, two women brought Messam to NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi in the Bronx in her own vehicle, pulled her from the car, loaded her onto a gurney, and wheeled her inside — unconscious, unresponsive, without pants, and with multiple injection marks on her buttocks — telling hospital staff they had found her outside Woodlawn Cemetery in that condition, then leaving the hospital. Messam was pronounced dead at the hospital; police said the injection marks led detectives to investigate whether she had suffered a botched cosmetic procedure. The Post, citing law-enforcement sources, reported that the silicone injections Leslie allegedly performed caused Messam to go into fatal cardiac arrest, and that after the procedure went wrong, Leslie and another woman — who has not been charged — dropped Messam at the hospital and left in a van, having claimed they found her in the cemetery in distress. The NYPD arrested Leslie on Friday, October 16, 2026, and charged her that week in connection with the death.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The arrest closed a years-long question that had haunted Messam’s family and friends, who remembered her after her death as a hardworking state employee devoted to her family. The case landed amid a string of similar prosecutions that the Post catalogued: an unlicensed cosmetologist who took a plea deal for killing a Queens mother with an illegal butt-enhancement injection in 2017; a Houston woman charged with manslaughter in 2021 for an unlicensed silicone injection that killed a Missouri woman; and a California woman dubbed “the butt lady” convicted of murdering actress Cindyana Santangelo during a botched injection session. Leslie was arraigned by Judge Pamela Goldsmith and granted supervised release; her attorney, Kyle Watters, could not be reached for comment.

Current Status

Leslie is due back in court on November 4, 2026. She has entered a not-guilty plea in Bronx Supreme Criminal Court, and the NYPD has not released additional details about her alleged role in the case beyond the charging documents. Criminally negligent homicide is the lowest-grade homicide charge in New York law, but the unauthorized-practice count adds a second charge tied to the alleged injections themselves.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Leslie’s rap sheet — petit larceny in Midtown in 2000 and two petit larceny charges in the 1990s, per law-enforcement sources — did not include anything like the homicide charge she now carries. The unauthorized-practice-of-a-profession charge formalizes what the investigation concluded: that she performed a medical procedure she had no license to perform, and that a woman died as a result. Whatever the trial brings, her name is now in the public record alongside one of the region’s most-covered examples of the black-market cosmetic-injection trade, in which at least a dozen people have died in recent years.

Sources

• New York Post, “Half-naked woman dumped outside NYC hospital was killed by botched butt lift from back-alley cosmetologist: cops,” Oct 22, 2026 — source
• CBS New York, “Woman faces homicide charge in deadly unlicensed butt lift in 2022, prosecutors say,” Oct 22, 2026 — source
• Patch, “NYC Police Arrest Mount Vernon Woman In Death Of CT Resident Killed In Apparent Medical Procedure Gone Awry,” Oct 22, 2026 — source
• News 12 New York, “Mount Vernon woman charged in Connecticut mother’s death after alleged botched cosmetic procedure,” Oct 2026 — source