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Tag: Countess of Chester Hospital

  • I wish I was able to contact the police immediately – Doctor

    I wish I was able to contact the police immediately – Doctor

    A doctor testified in court that he “wished” he had called the police about his worries about a nurse who is accused of killing many babies at a hospital neonatal unit.

    A year-long alleged binge by 32-year-old Lucy Letby at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Cheshire between June 2015 and June 2016 is alleged to have targeted newborns who were preterm or ill.

    Ten infants passed away before being saved by doctors and nurses, while five boys and two girls perished, Manchester Crown Court heard.

    Consultant Dr Ravi Jayaram told the court on Tuesday there were significant concerns over Letby’s ‘association’ with numerous baby collapses, and they were raised eight months before she stopped working at the hospital.

    ‘We had significant concerns from the autumn of 2015,’ he said. ‘They were on the radar of someone as senior as the executive director of nursing as far back as October 2015.

    ‘As clinicians, we put our faith in the system… in senior management to escalate concerns and investigate them. The initial response was, “It’s unlikely that anything is going on. We’ll see what happens”.

    ‘We said, “OK” – against our better judgment in retrospect.’

    After those concerns were raised, from November 2015 onwards, Letby allegedly went on to murder two children and attempted to kill six others.

    Dr Stephen Brearey, head of the neonatal unit, reviewed the circumstances surrounding the case of Child D shortly after her death in June 2015, the court was told previously.

    Dr Jayaram said the review identified Letby’s presence at a number of collapses but it was ‘an association, nothing more’.

    He said concerns were flagged a second time in February 2016, to the medical director and the director of nursing.

    ‘My colleague Dr Brearey requested a meeting with them,’ he said. ‘They didn’t respond to that for another three months and we were stuck because we had concerns and didn’t know what to do.

    ‘In retrospect, I wished we had bypassed them and gone straight to the police.

    ‘We by no means were playing judge and jury at any point but the association was becoming clearer and clearer and we needed to find the right way to do this. We were in an unprecedented situation.

    ‘Eventually, we reached a point in June 2016 when we said, “Something has got to change”, but that’s not for me to talk about now.’

    Ben Myers KC, defending, said the doctors were ‘grown adults’ who could have gone straight to the police.

    Dr Jayaram replied: ‘We were also beginning to get a reasonable amount of pressure from senior management at the hospital not to make a fuss.

    ‘In retrospect, we were all grown-ups and we should have stood up and not listened.’

    Letby, originally from Hereford, denies the allegations.

  • Lucy Letby, nurse accused of murdering babies ‘wrote confession note – ‘I am evil, I did this’

    On day four of the Lucy trial, the court was shown a piece of paper on which she had allegedly written: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough.”

    A neonatal nurse accused of murdering seven babies allegedly left a handwritten note confessing to her crimes that read “I AM EVIL I DID THIS”.

    Lucy Letby, 32, is alleged to have gone on a year-long killing spree while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

    She is also accused of the attempted murder of 10 other babies.

    On Thursday morning, on the fourth day of her trial, the prosecution concluded its opening statement, in which the case against Letby was laid out.

    Nick Johnson KC finished by telling Manchester Crown Court about a series of handwritten notes and Post-Its found during a search of her home.

    On one green post-it note – which was shown to the court – she had written: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them.”

    She also wrote: “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters, “I AM EVIL I DID THIS”.

    There was no reaction from Letby as her alleged confession was read out.

    Nurse ‘killed two of three triplets’

    Over the past four days, the 22 charges against Letby have been described in court.

    Letby, of Hereford, has pleaded not guilty to all counts.

    The children and their families are not being named by the media and so are referred as Children A to Q.

    One, Child P, was one of two triplets the prosecution claims were killed by Letby. Their brother survived as he was in another room.

    A day after Child P died, Child Q was sabotaged, allegedly, by Letby.

    Mr Johnson said Letby falsified medical records to give herself an alibi at the time of Child Q’s sudden collapse.

    Apart from three days the following week, this was to be the last time Letby would work at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

    The defence is now due to begin its opening argument before the main evidence portion of the trial begins.

    Doctors grew suspicious about ‘cold-blooded’ Letby

    “Cold-blooded” Letby tried to kill one “resilient” newborn girl four times “before succeeding”, the court was told.

    The nurse was also questioned by police about why she had sent a sympathy card to the baby’s parents.

    By April 2016, consultants at the hospital had grown suspicious of Letby – moving her off night shifts over concern about the “correlation between her presence and unexpected deaths/life-threatening episodes”.

    One consultant began to feel “uncomfortable” when he realised Letby was alone with the child. When he walked into the room, he noted that the infant’s breathing tube was dislodged.

    “We alleged she was trying to kill Child K when the paediatric consultant walked in on her,” Mr Johnson told the court.

    The trial continues.

     

     

  • Lucy Letby: Nurse killed 7 babies in ‘malevolent’ poison plot, prosecutor says

    A neonatal nurse was accused in court of giving neonates insulin and air injections at a hospital in the United Kingdom while she was suspected of killing seven babies and trying to kill ten more.

    Prosecutors accused Lucy Letby, 32, of being a “constant malevolent presence” at the hospital in northwest England in a years-long case that has sparked horror and fascination in the country. She has pleaded not guilty.

    Prosecutor Nick Johnson told jurors that Countess of Chester Hospital, where Letby worked, saw a significant rise in deaths and “catastrophic collapses” in its neonatal unit between 2015 and 2016, according to the Associated Press.

    Doctor accused of killing 14 patients with ‘excessive’ fentanyl doses

    “Babies who had not been unstable at all suddenly deteriorated. Sometimes babies who had been sick but then been on the mend suddenly deteriorated for no apparent reason,” he said.

    Johnson told the court Monday that a premature baby who was killed in June 2015, one day after he was born, is believed to be Letby’s first victim. Doctors noticed that child A, as he was identified in court for privacy reasons, had an “odd discoloration” on his skin, Johnson reportedly said. An autopsy could not determine his cause of death.

    An expert who looked into the case said the most likely cause was air injected into the bloodstream “by someone who knew it would cause significant harm,” the prosecutor said.