SAN MATEO COUNTY —The case of a Florida woman charged with involuntary manslaughter and practicing medicine without a license in the death of a South Bay model and Kardashian lookalike may hinge on what a still-pending coroner’s report says.
Vivian Gomez, 50 of Royal Palm Beach, Fla., was arrested on April 21 at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport in Florida’s Broward County, police records show. She made bail this week and is out of custody, with a list of restrictions on her travel and behavior issued by the court.
The arrest came the day after the death of San Jose-area resident Christina Ashten Gourkani at the age of 34. Gourkani met with Gomez at the Marriott hotel in Burlingame, where prosecutors say Gomez performed an “illegal gluteal silicone injection” on the popular social media personality.
A self-professed “big fan” of Kardashian who spoke openly about a passion for plastic surgery, Gourkani had a significant social-media following, to whom she flaunted her Kardashian-like looks and exaggerated physique. She had nearly 140,000 Instagram followers and more than 200,000 Twitter followers before her death.
Prosecutors say Gourkani quickly felt ill following the April 19 procedure and was transported to a hospital, where she died the next day of “respiratory failure and a pulmonary embolism.”
Geoffrey Carr, the defense attorney for Gomez, told the Bay Area News Group in a phone interview that his client was “instrumental” in getting emergency personnel to the hotel when Gourkani was experiencing medical issues. Carr said Gourkani initially refused to go to the hospital but her partner, Gomez and the emergency medical technicians eventually convinced her to go.
Carr claimed that Gourkani’s only symptoms upon arrival at the hospital were lightheadedness and disorientation, adding that she thought she was in San Francisco when she was indeed in Burlingame.
According to Carr, Gomez didn’t leave the scene until Gourkani was in the hospital, and that happened to be around the time when her condition deteriorated. He said hospital records showed that Gourkani was suffering from brain swelling at the time.
“(Gomez) left town before any of that was known,” he said. He added that he wasn’t certain if her departure was in response to Gourkani’s condition or if she simply was returning home to Florida.
In a court appearance in Redwood City on Tuesday, Judge Lisa A. Novak denied a defense motion to reduce Gomez’s bail, which was set at $200,000. After testimony from Gomez’s son, the family’s bail money was deemed to be coming from a legitimate source and bail was posted shortly thereafter, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors say the court approved the bail on five conditions:
Gomez must surrender both her U.S. and Colombian passports to law enforcement; remain in California at all times; not perform any medical or cosmetic procedures; not possess any instruments intended for use in medical or cosmetic procedures; and waive her 4th Amendment rights and be subject to search and seizure by law enforcement.
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe said Thursday that Gomez posted bail and was staying with a family member in Southern California. She’s due back in court for entry of plea on June 7.
Carr also took issue with what he deemed a premature charge of involuntary manslaughter. He said that without the official toxicology and autopsy reports — still pending, about six weeks after the incident — there’s no legal way to say that Gomez was responsible for Gourkani’s death.
“The issue is that we do not have an autopsy report,” Carr said. “(Gomez) did poke (Gourkani) with a needle and that may have caused some problems but did it cause death? (That) is the issue.”
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe called the charge before final coroner’s report “standard,” noting that such decisions are sometimes accelerated when a suspect is in custody, due to legal requirements on charging, arraignment and bail.
“As in all our cases, if we had loads of time to sit and wait for (the coroner’s report) to come back we would, but because Ms. Gomez was in custody we had 48 hours to make the charge,” Wagstaffe said. “If later on, once we get that toxicology report, if it were to demonstrate to us that what Ms. Gomez did did not contribute to the death, well, that would cause us to reevaluate.”
If the toxicology report reveals that the injection was indeed legitimate and did not lead to Gourkani’s death, the DA’s Office would “reconsider” the involuntary manslaughter charge, Wagstaffe added.
“I won’t promise we’ll drop it, I’ll leave that to my prosecutor,” he said. “But we’d definitely reconsider it based on the evidence we have at that point.”
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