Police arrested a Mission man who they accuse of practicing dentistry without a license out of his home.
Mission police arrested 72-year-old Carlos Raul Flores on Thursday and he was charged with two counts of practicing medicine without a license.
The investigation into Flores began May 5, when a local dentist called Mission Police Chief Robert Dominguez to tell him that a woman — who’s a patient of the dentist — went to a house in Mission and had a wisdom tooth extracted, according to a probable cause affidavit for Flores’ arrest.
The woman spoke with detectives June 17 and said she had been having a lot of pain because of her wisdom tooth, so she contacted her sister-in-law and asked whether she knew any dentists.
According to the affidavit, the sister-in-law recommended Flores.
The woman contacted Flores and he scheduled an “appointment” for her and identified himself as “Dr. Carlos Flores,” Mission police said.
She told detectives that she met with Flores on four different occasions, the first on Nov. 21, 2020, when Flores made an incision on her gum to give the wisdom tooth space to come out, according to the affidavit.
Her second visit with Flores was May 30, when Flores extracted the tooth, police said.
“The defendant had injected her with anesthesia before starting the extraction and provided her with a pill that he placed under her tongue after the attempt at extracting her wisdom tooth,” the affidavit stated.
Flores also gave the woman a prescription that she turned in at an H-E-B Plus near her house.
The woman told police that Flores had a room attached to the back of the residence, with a bed in the center of the room and a light on top, where he took his patients, according to the charging document.
“(She) stated Mr. Flores would wash his tools that he would put in her mouth. (She) stated she had to spit into a bucket that was on the floor. (She) stated she had seen a diploma from Mexico hung on the wall,” the affidavit stated.
She also told police she began to bleed when Flores was extracting her wisdom tooth, and Flores had to stop the procedure.
The woman’s husband, who was at Flores’ house, offered to take his wife to the hospital, but Flores told them it wasn’t necessary and they would be charged a lot of money, according to the affidavit.
“(She) stated that on the third and fourth visit she went to see the defendant was based on the fact that she still had pain to where her wisdom tooth was before being extracted. (She) stated that Mr. Flores told her that she was healing just well,” the affidavit stated.
However, the pain continued and she went to a local dentist who referred her to another dentist, who determined that the root tips of her tooth had been left inside, which was what was causing her pain, police said.
Flores bailed out of the Hidalgo County Adult Detention Center Friday on a total of $5,000 in bonds, records show.
