From a Florida prison in November 2011, Shatarka Nuby penned a letter to the state’s health department about her cosmetically enhanced buttocks.
Her rear end had hardened and turned black, she wrote. Side effects from the years-old injections left the mother of three feeling sick. And she claimed her surgeon — Oneal Ron Morris — was the same faux cosmetic doctor that police had arrested and accused of pumping a near-lethal formula of cement, mineral oil, bathroom caulking and Fix-a-Flat tire sealant into other women’s bodies.
Her patients called her “Duchess.”
Officials began investigating and interviewed Nuby.
But four months later, she was dead.
The official cause of death was respiratory failure from “massive systemic silicone migration” from injections to Nuby’s buttocks and hips, according to the medical examiner.
Morris was charged with manslaughter and practicing medicine without a license in the summer of 2012, and last month pleaded no contest to both, reported the Sun Sentinel.
On Monday, a judge sentenced Morris to 10 years in prison and five years probation for her crimes.
“My daughter died the most inhuman death,” Nuby’s mother, Sherri Pitts, said at the hearing. “Eighteen months she suffered not knowing the full of what put in her body.”
For years in Florida, Morris’s name — and posterior — have been widely reported and eventually made national headlines when photos of the woman surfaced. She reportedly used the same cut-rate cosmetic methods that sickened or killed others to inject her own hips and buttocks, leaving them abnormally large and misshapen.
Local media labeled Morris’s ongoing saga the “toxic tush” case.
During sentencing Monday, Morris repeatedly denied allegations that she intentionally hurt anyone and insisted that she had “never ever, nor would dare ever” to inject “any human with any type of unknown substance.”
“I’ve been found guilty by the media and outside sources based on lies,” Morris said.
In statements to the judge, Nuby’s family and friends were emotional and even raised their voices at times, bickering loudly with Morris. They asked for a life sentence.
“There’s no closure. Putting in jail won’t bring her back,” Nuby’s aunt Juanita Nuby told CBS Miami. “This is a court of man, all you can do is put her away and teach her a lesson.”
Other alleged victims were in the courtroom, reported CBS Miami, and told the judge they, too, became sick after Morris injected them with what they believed to be medical-grade silicone.
“You gave us your word that the products you was using was A-1 products. And come to find out they were not,” Kisha Jones said. “Maybe in the beginning, but greed really took over, because you was pocketing the money from every victim.”
WashingtonPost.com
