A neo-natal nurse on Monday went on trial in Britain, charged with the murder of seven babies in her care and the attempted killing of 10 others.
Lucy Letby, 32, has denied murdering five boys and two girls, and attempting to murder another five boys and five girls between June 2015 and June 2016.
She is alleged to have carried out the killings at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northwest England, where she was working.
Photo: AP
Opening the case for the prosecution, lawyer Nick Johnson said that neo-natal mortality at the hospital had been comparable with other units around the UK, but over 18 months from January 2015 it saw a “significant” rise in the number of deaths and serious catastrophic collapses.
Consultants were concerned because babies who were dying deteriorated unexpectedly. Some who collapsed did not respond to appropriate treatment.
Others collapsed then dramatically recovered, defying “the normal experience” of doctors, Johnson told a jury at Manchester Crown Court.
“Having searched for a cause, which they were unable to find, the consultants noticed that the inexplicable collapses and deaths did have one common denominator,” he said. “The presence of one of the neo-natal nurses and that nurse was Lucy Letby.”
Johnson said deaths and collapses happened on night shifts when Letby was on shift, then when she moved to work during the day.
One review suggested that in the 12 months from mid-2015, two children were poisoned with insulin.
The “only reasonable conclusion” that can be drawn was that it was done deliberately, he said.
“This was no accident,” he said, describing the collapses and deaths of all 17 children concerned as not “naturally occurring tragedies.”
Some were injected with air in their bloodstream, others were fed with insulin or too much milk, the lawyer said.
“They were all the work, we say, of the woman in the dock, who we say was the constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse of these 17 children,” Johnson said.
In all, Letby is facing 22 charges — seven of murder and 15 of attempted murder, as she allegedly tried to kill some children more than once.
The youngest alleged murder victim — a boy who was born prematurely — was just a day old and “well,” but died within 90 minutes of Letby coming on duty on June 8, 2015, the court was told.
Medical experts said his death was consistent with a deliberate injection of air or something else into his circulation minutes before his collapse.
Discoloration on the boy’s skin was consistent with some of the other cases in which Letby is alleged to have injected air into a victim’s bloodstream, the jury heard.
Letby then tried to kill the boy’s twin sister just hours later, it was alleged.
She was revived and does not appear to have suffered any adverse effects, Johnson said.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
RSS