A man who ran a holistic wellness center in the Bronx has been taken into custody after a young woman died while receiving an anti-aging injection at his clinic, and police say he was never licensed to practice medicine in New York in the first place. The suspect, 55-year-old Luis Rojas Cabrera, is now facing a case built around accusations that he recklessly held himself out as a doctor.
Authorities said the patient, 27-year-old Elizabeth Barron, went into medical distress on Sunday afternoon while getting the anti-aging injection at the center on Riverdale Avenue. She was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead, a sudden loss that stunned the people who knew her and set off the investigation now unfolding.
The wellness center is now shuttered, its exam rooms empty and its gate pulled closed. Cabrera, who went by the name Dr. Rojas, is in police custody and is expected to face a judge, as investigators work to understand how what was billed as a routine cosmetic procedure at the clinic ended in a death.
On the center's website, the suspect presented himself as Dr. Rojas, describing himself as a surgeon and naturopath and listing specialties that included hydrotherapy and nutrition. The site claimed he had performed more than 6,000 surgeries and had completed his medical training in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.
But according to police, that training was the extent of his credentials. Officials said Cabrera was only licensed to practice medicine in the Dominican Republic, and not in New York or elsewhere in the United States, meaning that in the eyes of authorities he should never have been treating patients at the Bronx clinic at all.
The website leaned heavily on the language of natural healing, using phrases such as running towards nature and may your food be your medicine and medicine be your food. That messaging helped draw clients to a center that authorities now say was being run by a man who did not hold the license required to operate it.
Near Barron's apartment building, not far from the clinic, staff and neighbors were left stunned to learn of her sudden death, remembering her as sweet and generous. The city's medical examiner will determine her official cause of death, even as the investigation into the clinic and the man who ran it continues to widen.