Convicted baby killer Lucy Letby was caught ‘virtually red-handed’ when she tried to kill a newborn baby at the Countess of Chester Hospital, a jury heard today.
Letby, 34, was convicted in August last year of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six other babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
The jury at Letby’s 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court failed to reach a verdict on six charges of attempted murder involving five children.
In the same court, the former nurse is now being tried again on one of those charges: an accusation that she tried to kill a girl known as Child K in February 2016.
Ravi Jayaram, a senior pediatrician in the neonatal unit, walked into the high-dependency nursery 1 and saw Letby alone in the room, standing over Baby K’s incubator.
The child’s satiety level dropped to a critical level, but the alarm that should have alerted the staff did not sound.
Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told a jury at Manchester Crown Court: ‘We say Lucy Letby was virtually caught red-handed by Dr Jayaram.’
Listen to The Mail’s coverage of The Trial of Lucy Letby:
Letby, 34, was convicted of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of six other babies in August last year
The jury at Letby’s 10-month trial at Manchester Crown Court failed to reach a verdict on six charges of attempted murder involving five children. She is being tried again on one of those charges
He said the attempt on the baby’s life took place within hours of her “very premature” birth, in the early hours of February 17, 2016.
At the time of Baby K’s collapse, there were only two nurses covering all four nurseries on the ward: Letby and one of her colleagues, Sophie Ellis.
Dr. Jayaram was distracted when he called to arrange the baby’s transfer to a higher hospital, while two nurses had briefly left the ward. One of them, Joanne Williams, Baby K’s designated nurse, had gone to the child’s mother.
“The claim we are making is very simple,” Mr Johnson said. ‘While Nurse Williams was coming out of Nursery 1, Lucy Letby was with baby K. She was there alone and K collapsed.
‘Dr Jayaram saw that when he came in after talking to the transport team. The ventilator for Baby K was breathing and she was connected to another machine that monitored her heart rate and saturations, which were set at predetermined levels.
“If there was a problem, alarms would have gone off, but they didn’t. The reason was that someone had disabled them.
“So when Dr. Jayaram entered the nursery, he saw Lucy Letby standing over K. The baby’s saturation level dropped, but the alarm did not sound. Not only that, but Lucy Letby did nothing.
‘We say that in these circumstances the only reasonable thing a nurse could have done was to call for help and/or use the Neopuff to breathe for the child.
“The reason she desaturated was because the ET tube had been moved. You can take it as proof that it was Lucy Letby, the convicted murderer, who moved the pipe.”
He added, “This event was not the only time Baby K became desaturated and displaced her fallopian tube during that shift. It happened two more times’.
Baby K later died after being transferred to another hospital. Mr Johnson told the jury: There was no suggestion that Letby’s actions had caused her death, but that she had tried to kill her.
The jury was told earlier today that Letby’s conviction for the murder of seven babies is a “key piece of evidence” in deciding whether she tried to kill another child.
Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told the jury of six men and six women: ‘As His Lordship told you yesterday, and most of you already know, there was a very lengthy trial about a year ago in which she was convicted of seven murders and six attempted murders.
‘That’s thirteen children. Here we are dealing with a 14 year old baby.’
He added: ‘It all happened while Lucy Letby was working as a nurse in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester. The other cases I mentioned are important in this case.’
The prosecutor suggested that the relevance of these cases was that it would help them decide the case before them.
“In short, we argue that her status as a multiple murderer and attempted multiple murderer is important evidence to consider when deciding whether you are certain she attempted to kill Baby K.”
Mr Johnson said the convictions gave the jury significant evidence about Letby’s intentions regarding Baby K.
The jury was shown a range of documents, including an assessment scheme for the neonatal unit, a floor plan of the unit and the locations of individual babies at the start and end of certain shifts.
The allegation is that Letby attempted to kill Baby K on February 17, 2016.
At the time, Letby was the designated nurse for two babies in Daycare 2. Baby K was in Daycare 1, and it was events there that prompted certain questions.
The jurors have been given iPads so they can access a variety of court documents. A walkthrough video was played showing each of the four rooms in the unit.
Mr. Johnson told them that what the lawyers in the case told them was “not the evidence.” They were merely suggesting what they saw as important evidence to look out for and identify ‘what the battle lines are’.
Mr Johnson told the jury that by this stage Letby had murdered five children and attempted to murder three more. She had tried to kill one of this last group twice.
He read out the names of the victims and the dates they were murdered. The first was a boy on June 8, 2015, the second another boy on June 14. Other murders followed on June 22, August 4 and October 23.
She had also tried to kill a girl on June 9/10, a boy on August 15 and another girl on September 21.
She committed the murders and attempted murders between June 2015 and June 2016 at the Countess of Chester Hospital (pictured), where she worked
Letby, from Hereford, watched from the dock at Manchester Crown Court (pictured) as the opening statement was delivered
‘After what we allege she did to Baby K, Lucy Letby murdered two of the three triplets on consecutive days, June 23 and 24, 2016.
‘By this time she had also tried to kill two other children, twins on April 9 and finally one on June 3.
“That will be part of the agreed facts.”
The prosecutor said Letby had regularly searched Facebook for relatives of the babies.
He said Baby K’s mother was already in labor when she arrived at the Countess of Chester Hospital shortly before 10am on February 15.
Her baby was ‘very, very premature’ at 24 weeks and six days gestation.
Medical staff had wanted to transfer her to a higher level hospital, but the nearest available unit was in Preston. Rather than risk the baby being born in the back of an ambulance, it was decided that her mother would stay in Chester.
The child was born on February 17 at 2:12 am. Early on, she did “remarkably well for a child of her immaturity.”
Her ‘Apgar’ scores were 4 out of 10 after five minutes, 9 out of 10 after five minutes and 9 out of 10 after 10 minutes.
Babies who score seven and above are considered to be in good condition.
It is known that Letby was with a nursing colleague, Joanne Williams, in Nursery 2 at the time of the birth. Records showed that she had co-signed for an infant’s medication.
Letby, from Hereford, watched from the dock as the opening statement was delivered.
She has always denied harming any child in her care and maintains her innocence.
The process continues.
