New Delhi: A British neonatal unit nurse is on trial for the alleged murder of seven babies under her care. The alleged murders were carried out between June 2015 and June 2016. She has also been accused of the attempted murder of ten other babies during the period at the Countess of Chester Hospital, in northwest England, where she was working, AFP reported.
According to the prosecution, 32-year-old Lucy Letby, carried out her murders by either injecting insulin or air into the baby's bloodstream or feeding them an excessive amount of milk. Letby has denied the 22 charges against her - seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder as she has tried to kill some victims on multiple occasions. The trial began on Monday during which the jury was informed that it could last up to six months.
Who is Lucy Letby?
The UK police began probing into the unexplained deaths of neonatal care babies in May 2017. According to AP, Letby was arrested three times before she was charged in November 2020. Letby worked as a student nurse during the three years of her training, in 2011 she qualified as a children's nurse at The University of Chester, BBC reported.
Murders and the common denominator
The prosecutor, Nick Johnson, on Monday, during the opening statement, said that over 18 months from January 2015, the hospital saw a "significant rise" in the number of deaths and a series of catastrophic collapses. The Chester hospital consultants were concerned as the babies in the neonatal unit deteriorated unexpectedly, and some wouldn't respond to the appropriate treatment, AFP reported.
While searching for the cause behind these incidents, a common denominator was the presence of a neonatal nurse, Lucy Letby, whom he described as a "constant malevolent presence".
Johnson said, initially, the incidents occurred at night, but once Letby moved to the day shift the collapses happened during the day.
According to AFP, it is alleged that Letby's youngest victim (Child A) was a prematurely born baby boy who was described as "well". However, the baby died within 90 minutes of Letby starting her shift on June 8, 2015. Allegedly, the nurse injected air into the bloodstream of the victim, medical experts said that his collapse was consistent with a deliberate injection of air minutes before.
She tried to murder his twin sister (Child B) hours later, it is alleged. However, she was revived and doesn't seem to have suffered any adverse effects, Johnson told the court. Another victim (Child C) was murdered after the five-day-old baby was injected with air into his stomach. Letby's next victim (Child D) -- a premature baby girl -- died in June 2015 by the same method, AFP reported. Letby's method was mostly administering air or insulin, she even fed her victims too much milk.
Two babies under her care died of insulin poisoning, it was found during the police review. The "only reasonable conclusion" that can be drawn was that it was done deliberately, Johnson said. "This was no accident," he said, describing the collapses and deaths of all 17 children concerned as not "naturally occurring tragedies", AFP reported.
In another incident, a woman who had come into the neonatal unit to give her child (Child E) milk found her baby in distress and bleeding from the mouth. Letby told the woman to "trust her" and asked her to leave. The baby died the following day, allegedly by an injection of air into the bloodstream. After the event, she made "fraudulent" nurses' notes to cover her tracks, according to AFP.
Her next victim was a baby girl (Child I), whom Letby attacked four times before she was successful. Large amounts of air were deliberately administered into Child I’s stomach via a nasogastric tube.
Contact grieving parents
According to AFP, Letby admitted that she sent a sympathy card to the parents of Child I but she said this was because she got to know them. She also searched for them on social media along with the families of three other victims. According to the report, she searched for Child E's family on social media in the days and months after his death, including on Christmas Day. Similarly, she searched for Child D's parents on Facebook.
Letby also searched for the parents of a child (Child F) who survived her alleged attack. When asked by the police why she searched for them, she said it might have been “to see how the child was doing”, according to The Guardian.
'I am Evil, I did this'
During the investigation, the police found several notes in Letby's house. Johnson said in his closing speech on Wednesday these notes were found among papers and other notes which also contained "many protestations of innocence".
One of the notes read, "I am evil I did this" another stated, "I don't deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them. I am a horrible evil person".