Lucy Letby, 32, is accused of injecting air into the tiny, premature child’s stomach via a nose tube, causing his breathing and heart to stop. It was a method described as “fairly effective” by a pathologist because it “doesn’t really leave much trace,” Manchester Crown Court heard. Letby is accused of murdering the boy, known as Child C, six days after attacking children in her care on the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neonatal unit for the first time in June 2015. Jurors were told that there was “a pattern emerging” with the nurse’s “method of attacking the babies” at the hospital, which was “beginning to develop.” Letby was also at the bedside of another baby who collapsed unexpectedly, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC told jurors on day two of the nurse’s six-month trial. The nurse’s first alleged murder, of Child A, occurred on June 8, 2015. She is accused of injecting air into the boy’s bloodstream and causing his twin sister, Child B, to collapse. Nurse denies killing seven babies and attempting to kill ten more. Child C was born prematurely on June 10, 2015, at 30 weeks, weighing 800g. Despite being in intensive care, he was in good health. Letby was working the nightshift on June 13 and into the next day, caring for a baby, while Child C was being cared for by another nurse. At around 11.15 p.m., Child C’s nurse was at a nursing station when the baby’s monitor sounded an alarm. When she arrived in his room, Letby was standing near his incubator for the third time in a week after a baby had collapsed, demonstrating the defendant’s alleged “constant malevolent presence,” jurors heard. “He’s going,” Letby is said to have told the other nurse. He’s leaving.” According to Mr Johnson, Letby texted an off-duty colleague that she wanted to be in Child C’s room because it would be “cathartic – in other words, would help her wellbeing – to see a living baby in the space previously occupied by a dead baby – Child A – but she had been put in another room.” Despite several hours of resuscitation attempts, Child C died at 5.58 a.m. on June 14th. According to a medical expert, “the only plausible mechanism” for the air in his body, which caused his collapse, was someone intentionally injecting it through his nose tube. Mr Johnson stated that an independent pathologist who reviewed the case concluded that Child C died as a result of his breathing becoming compromised and him going into cardiac arrest. “If you’re trying to murder a child in a neonatal unit, it’s a fairly effective way of doing it,” the prosecutor told jurors. It doesn’t leave much of a trace.” Letby searched Facebook for Child C’s parents hours after the child died, according to Mr Johnson. According to the timings, it was “one of the first things she did when waking up” after finishing her shift around 8 a.m. “ “Lucy Letby was the only person working on the night shift when Child C died who had also worked on either shift when Child A died and his twin sister Child B collapsed,” he added. Letby, of Hereford, denies murdering five boys and two girls and attempting to murder five more boys and five girls. Previously, jurors were told that she allegedly used a variety of methods to attack the children, including insulin poisoning and injecting air into their bloodstream. The defendant allegedly attempted to kill some of the babies multiple times before succeeding, according to the jury. A probe was launched and was unable to find a cause for the “significant increase” in the number of baby collapses, but it is claimed that one common denominator in all of the cases was Letby’s presence on duty. The trial is still ongoing.
