An English nurse was found guilty on Friday of killing seven premature newborn babies in a year in the hospital where she worked and of attempting to murder six others, after a long trial that has horrified the British.
This judgment “will not take away the extreme pain, anger and distress that we have all felt”, reacted the families of the victims in a press release read on the steps of the Manchester court (north) where he will have It took nine months of trial and more than a month of deliberations to reach a verdict. “We may never know why this happened.”
Lucy Letby is now believed to be the most prolific child serial killer in modern UK history and police are continuing to review the records of thousands of patients for possible additional victims.
This 33-year-old woman, who claimed to be innocent, will experience her sentence on Monday. She was not present in court on Friday.
Described as “cold, calculating, cruel and tenacious” by the prosecution, she worked in the intensive care unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in north-west England.
Between June 2015 and June 2016, seven premature babies died there suddenly, for no obvious reason, sometimes within hours of each other.
In particular, she injected air intravenously into newborns, used their nasogastric tubes to send air, or an overdose of milk, into their stomachs.
Lucy Letby was the only member of the medical staff still on duty during the brutal deterioration of the newborns, Judge James Goss pointed out.
Faced with the shock caused by the case and the questions that arise over the reaction of the health services, the government has ordered the launch of an independent investigation to try to learn the lessons.
The trial started on October 10 in Manchester. Parents testified, sometimes in tears.
A mum has told how, returning to deliver milk to one of her premature twins in August 2015, she heard him scream and found he had blood around his mouth. She had been reassured by Lucy Letby.
According to the prosecution, the nurse had just pushed medical equipment down the tiny baby’s throat, and also injected him with air. He was dead a few hours later, having lost a quarter of his blood.
“The parents were exposed to his morbid curiosity and his false compassion,” prosecutor Pascale Jones said after the judgment. Her actions “represent a complete betrayal of the trust placed in her”.
The prosecution explained that Lucy Letby attacked babies after their parents left, when the nurse in charge went away, or at night when she was alone. She would then sometimes join collective efforts to save newborn babies, or even assist desperate parents.
Among the victims, triplets, two of whom will die within 24 hours of each other after returning from vacation in June 2016. The third will be spared, his parents having begged that he be transferred to another hospital.
At that time, having killed without attracting attention, she had become “uncontrollable”, said the prosecutor. “She thought she was God.”
“I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to take care of them. I’m a horrible person,” the nurse wrote on a post-it note found at her home in 2018. In other documents, however, she proclaimed her innocence.
His lawyer Ben Myers argued that the neonatology unit in 2015-2016 “welcomed more babies than normal, with greater care needs”, and had “failed” to meet them.
He had claimed that incompetent doctors had blamed him but the hospital services are now accused in a BBC investigation of having covered up the case despite alerts.
Transferred in June 2016 to an administrative service, arrested for the first time in 2018, then in 2019, Lucy Letby was finally imprisoned in November 2020. The police continue to investigate other periods of her career, in particular when she worked in a hospital in Liverpool.
08/18/2023 22:15:02 – London (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
