Lucy Letby, 32 years old, denies murdering five boys & two girls and attempted to murder five more between June 2015 – June 2016.
On Monday, a neonatal nurse in Britain was charged with murdering seven babies and attempted murdering 10 others.
Lucy Letby, 32 years old, denies murdering five boys & two girls and attempted to murder five more between June 2015 – June 2016.
It is alleged that she carried out the murders at Chester’s Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, north-west England, where her job was.
Nick Johnson, opening the prosecution case said that the hospital’s neonatal mortality had been comparable with other units across the country.
However, it experienced a significant increase in the number deaths and severe catastrophic collapses within 18 months starting January 2015.
Consultants were concerned when babies died unexpectedly. Some babies who died unexpectedly did not respond well to treatment.
Other people collapsed, then miraculously recovered, defying the “normal experience” of doctors, he told a Manchester Crown Court jury.
“The consultants searched for a cause but were unable find one. They discovered that the mysterious deaths and collapses did share a common denominator,” he claimed.
“The presence and care of one of Neo-Natal Nurses, Lucy Letby.”
Johnson claimed that Letby worked night shifts and that she was then able to go to work during the day.
One review indicated that insulin poisoning was a problem in two children between mid-2015 to mid-2015. He added that the only reasonable conclusion was that it had been done intentionally.
“This was not an accident,” he stated, describing the deaths and collapses in which all 17 of the children were involved as not “naturally occurring tragedies”.
According to the lawyer, some people were given air injections in their bloodstreams while others were given too much insulin or too little milk.
Johnson claimed that they were “all the work, she says, of the lady in the dock,” who Johnson stated was the constant malevolent presence as things turned sour for 17 of their children.
Letby is currently facing 22 charges, seven of which are murder and fifteen of attempted murder. She allegedly tried to murder children multiple times.
The court was told that the youngest victim, a boy who was prematurely born, was only one day old. However, he died in less than 90 minutes after Letby arrived on duty on June 8, 2015.
Medical experts believe that his death was caused by deliberate infusions of air or some other substance into his circulation, minutes before he collapsed.
According to the jury, discoloration on the skin of the boy was consistent with other cases in which Letby is accused of injecting air into the bloodstreams of victims.
The boy’s twin sister was then killed by Letby, as it was claimed. Johnson stated that Johnson revived her and she appears not to have suffered any adverse side effects.
