By The Opinion
Dec 13, 2024, 18:28 PM EST
Hard-to-believe stories that seem straight out of fiction happen every day, like the case of a Long Island woman who was working as a dentist, without a license, in the kitchen of her apartment and was caught “pulling a woman’s teeth in her own room.” home”.
Gladys Serrano “She did more than cook in her kitchen,” is how The Independent puts it, which also reports that the woman could spend at least four years in prison for operating a dental clinic without a license.
The person who spoke with the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office was a patient of Serrano; He went to his office located in the kitchen of his apartment on Greenwich Street in Hempstead to have a tooth extracted, but Serrano ended up removing 5 teeth that were supposedly decayed.
The patient reported that the dentist told her to clean the blood that was coming out profusely from her mouth with paper towels and rinse it with salt water. In addition, he placed a dental bridge that was never adjusted. He had to pay $2,000 for the procedure.
The authorities executed a search warrant at the home of the alleged dentist, where They found a dental chair inside the kitchenwhere the improvised office was located, in addition to dental instruments, impression molds, extraction tools, tartar scrapers and used dental needles.
They also found a huge container with Expired bottles of medications from Colombia and El Salvadoras well as antibiotic capsules such as Amoxicillin, the muscle relaxant Relaflex and the anesthetic lidocaine.
Not only was the location operating without a license, a records search turned up no person licensed to practice dentistry in New York State by the name of Gladys Serrano.
Neighbors come to his defense
During the raid, several neighbors came to the apartment; Some of them came to her defense, like Myriam Kai, who has lived in the building since 1978 and said she comes from the same country as Gladys, El Salvador.
According to Eyewitness News, Kai said that his neighbor “is a very nice lady. I don’t know why they give so much importance to this. He has a university degree in El Salvador. “She is a great dentist.”
The Nassau County District Attorney reported that the defendant may have actually received her dental training in El Salvador, where she provided dental care to Spanish-speaking patients.
Kai added that “most Latinos are afraid to go to the hospital because they do not have papers or because it is more expensive. But I know how hard it is for people who don’t have insurance to get the help they really need.”
Meanwhile, prosecutor Anne Donnelly said there are “other options, such as Nassau University Medical Center, which offers community dentistry, Stony Brook University and New York University, that do not raise citizenship questions.”
Donnelly also told ABC7 that the unlicensed office “It’s very unhealthy and very scary for people who might have been there.”.
Serrano pleaded not guilty to unauthorized exercise of a profession, a felony. She was released and ordered to surrender her passport, requesting that she not leave the state. She was released from police custody and was fitted with an electronic monitoring device.
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