Valley women claim botched lip injections caused severe infection

PHOENIX - They're all the rage for some women - pouty lips. To get the look, they're paying to have lip injections. Which works out for most, but several Valley women are dealing with a nightmare after their lip injections were botched. We want to warn you - the photos you're about to see are pretty graphic.

We spoke to seven girls who say they went to the house willingly to get lip injections. They tell us they had been recommended by other people who have gone previously and had good results. What these girls have in common is August third. They didn't know each other beforehand but met after their lips were infected. 

Again, we want to warn that these images are graphic. Swelling, cold sores, pus, and much more.

On August third, these girls went to a home in Maricopa to get lip injections. Instead, they left with their lips infected.

"Right after I left getting my lips done - an hour later, my lips got huge, like, giant," said Alexandra Garaventa, who claims lip injections caused infection.

"The pain after was so bad, I couldn't even feel my lips," said Ashleigh Villaverde, who also claims lip injections caused infection. "We couldn't even sit there and go to bed, our lips were throbbing."

The girls say the woman who performed the procedure came highly recommended and at a low cost.

"It was cheaper, that's not the smartest thing but since I had seen so many people and my friend had been going for a year," Garaventa said. "She was telling people that she was certified to do lip injections and since I [had] seen other people's [lips], I had decided why not go."

Villaverde says this wasn't her first time going to the woman to get her lips done. In fact, she had gone several times before. But this time, it felt different.

"As soon as I went this time, I knew something was wrong because each time I injected, it hurt so bad," Villaverde said. "That has never happened before. They have swelled up, but never to the point that I couldn't even touch them."

The girls rushed to the emergency room hours after the injections. Some were admitted to the hospital, with doctors not knowing what was put into their lips.

"When I came in, they already knew what was going on," said Nayhely McLaughlin, who claims lip injections caused infection. "They asked if I went to Maricopa - we just had, like, eight girls here yesterday."

The girls say the woman would charge $80 a milliliter. The average cost is $600. We headed to the home where this happened and there was no answer at the door.

"We don't know if it's going to have good or bad results," McLaughlin said. "If we're going to have scars, we don't know if it's going to leave us ugly. We don't know if it's going to leave us ugly or start to rot."

The girls also tell us the woman would only do these procedures on Saturdays, going on to say she allegedly had more than 20 people waiting to get this procedure done. 

The Maricopa Police Department has been notified. We have reached out to them and we're waiting to hear back. As for the girls., they say they've learned their lesson and will be going to a professional if they want injections.