A British nurse accused of murdering seven babies in her care was interrupted during one attack by the alleged victim’s mother who decided to pay a visit to her newborn son at the hospital, a court was told Tuesday.
Lucy Letby, 32, has been charged with 22 crimes including the murder of five baby boys, two girls, and the attempted murder of 10 other infants at Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northwest England, between 2015 and 2016. Letby has denied the allegations.
During her trial at Manchester Crown Court on Tuesday, the jury heard that the mother of a victim referred to only as Child E didn’t realize her baby boy was being attacked when Letby told her the reason blood was pouring from her child’s mouth was due to a tube irritating his throat. Prosecutors say Letby reassured the mother, who was worried about her acutely distressed baby, with the phrase: “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”
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The court was told that the mother had prematurely given birth to twins, and Letby was designated as their nurse. She is charged with murdering Child E and attempting to murder his sister, Child F.
Letby told the worried mother to go back to the hospital’s postnatal ward after she walked in on the nurse, which the mother duly did. The court heard the worried parent called her husband after the incident.
Prosecutors claim Letby later falsified nursing notes to “cover her tracks,” the BBC reports. The court also heard that one of the doctors who saw Child E said he’d never seen such a large bleed in a small baby, with subsequent analysis finding that the child lost around a quarter of his blood volume. Child E’s parents didn’t want their baby to have a post-mortem examination, with the on-call doctor and coroner’s office agreeing such an investigation was unnecessary.
Letby allegedly had a “very unusual interest” in the twins’ parents, repeatedly searching for them on Facebook, including on Christmas Day in 2015, it’s claimed.
The baby’s death is just one of several that have been described at Letby’s trial.
Nurse Letby allegedly injected air into the stomach of another premature baby, Child C, through his nose tube, which caused respiratory failure and his heart to stop. Letby was the only person in the room when Child C collapsed, even while she was supposed to be elsewhere caring for a more seriously ill child, it’s claimed.
She is also accused of killing Child A by injecting air into his bloodstream and attacking his twin sister, Child B, in a similar manner six days later, causing her to collapse. Letby also looked up Child C’s parents on Facebook the day she died, the court heard. Child D was likewise allegedly murdered by Letby with an air injection, after which the nurse was accused of sending “many messages” to friends suggesting all the victims’ deaths could be easily explained by natural causes.
The trial could last for up to six months, jurors were told.
