Former nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of trying to murder another newborn baby, adding to convictions last year that made her Britain’s most prolific serial child killer of modern times.
Letby, 34, was found guilty last August of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England.
She was jailed for life and told she would never be released. Letby denied having harmed any baby in her care.
Last month, she went on trial for a second time on one count of attempted murder of a further baby girl, known as Child K, a charge on which the original jury had failed to reach a verdict.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson told Manchester Crown Court that Child K was born prematurely at 25 weeks in February 2016 at the hospital, and had been connected to a ventilator and other machines monitoring her heart rate and oxygen levels.
Little more than an hour after the birth, while other staff were absent, Johnson said, senior doctor Ravi Jayaram entered the room where she was being looked after to find the baby’s breathing tube dislodged, alarms that should have sounded had become disabled, and Letby standing there “doing nothing”.
He said on two other occasions that night, Letby interfered with the breathing tube to give the impression there was a problem with the baby.
Cape Times