Lucy Letby was ‘constant malevolent’ presence on neonatal ward, court hears

A nurse murdered seven babies and attempted to kill 10 others by poisoning them on a hospital neonatal unit where she was a “constant malevolent presence”, a court has heard.

Lucy Letby, 32, fatally injected newborns with insulin, air or milk during night shifts when she knew their parents would not be present, a jury was told.

One of the babies was just 24 hours old when Letby allegedly injected him with air, killing him just 90 minutes after she came on shift. The nurse tried to kill his twin sister the next day, it is alleged.

The court was told that Letby, who was trained to care for the most seriously ill babies, developed an “unusual interest” in the parents of some of her 17 alleged victims and in some cases tracked them on Facebook.

Jurors were told that she was the only “common denominator” that connected the deaths of seven infants and the “catastrophic” collapses of 10 others at the Countess of Chester hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. She allegedly tried to kill some babies more than once – in one case, three times – using various methods.

Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told the jury: “We say the collapses and deaths of the 17 children named on the indictment were not normally occurring tragedies. They were all the work, we say, of the woman in the dock who we say was a constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse for these children.”

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Source: The Guardian, 10 October 2022