Man arrested for illegal dental work

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MIAMI, Sept. 13 (UPI) -- A Florida man was arrested and charged for allegedly disfiguring a teenage girl by performing unlicensed dentistry on her, officials said.

Humberto Francisco Perez, 81, was arrested Wednesday along with two of his family members for the February incident, The Miami Herald reported.

The 14-year-old girl's mother, Claribel Agramonte, said her daughter chipped a tooth in February and she was referred to Perez by a friend.

Perez agreed to do the dental work in a back room of his house for $500, however instead of fixing the tooth, he filed down the girl's four front teeth.

"I asked him why he was doing that, but he insisted that he had been a dentist decades ago in Cuba and that he knew what he was doing, that my daughter would come out beautiful in her quinceanera photos," Agramonte said.

After the six-hour procedure, Perez fitted the teen with a temporary bridge and scheduled her to come back to have a permanent one put in.

"What he placed in my daughter's mouth was an iron bridge painted white with the form of teeth," Agramonte said of the permanent bridge. "She looked as if she had four pieces of chewing gum instead of teeth."

The teen was in pain for weeks after the ordeal and complained of sensitivity to anything cold or hot.

"The victim did not want to eat, and cried of pain," the arrest report states. "Her gums were blackened and swollen."

She is now under the care of a dentist at the University of Miami.

"The professional dentist said he had never seen anything so horrid in his 30 years of experience," said Miami police Maj. David Magnusson.

Perez and his wife, María, who witnessed the procedure, face charges of child abuse, child negligence, and providing dentistry services without a license.

The couple's daughter, Odalis Hernandez-Perez, faces a charge of child negligence. The arrest report states that Hernandez-Perez was present during the procedure but ignored the girl's screams.