A nurse accused of murdering seven babies would not leave alone the parents of a newborn boy she allegedly killed until she was ordered to do so by her supervisor, a court has heard.
Lucy Letby is accused of murdering the infant days after he was born prematurely, weighing 800 grams, at the Countess of Chester hospital, on 10 June 2015. Child C is the second of the seven babies she is alleged to have killed at the hospital’s neo-natal unit.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of 10 others between June 2015 and June 2016.
Jurors at Manchester crown court have been told that Letby, now 32, was designated the care of another baby boy on the night shift of 13 June, who was in a room separate from Child C.
The prosecution said Letby was present in intensive care room one when Child C suddenly collapsed at about 11.15pm, despite, they say, her having no clear reason to be there. She was said to have fatally inserted air into his stomach via a nasogastric tube.
The nursing shift leader on duty that night, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court she assigned another nurse on duty, Melanie Taylor, to offer Child C’s parents a memory box in which hand and footprints would be collected.
The witness said: “I asked Lucy to focus on [her designated baby] because I was still concerned about him. However, Lucy went into the family room a few times and I asked her to come out and leave that family with Melanie Taylor.”
Simon Driver, prosecuting, asked: “Was it any part of the responsibilities for her to go into that family room at this time?” The witness replied: “Not that I can remember.”
Driver went on: “You instructed her to return her attention to [her designated baby] once or more than once?” The witness said: “More than once.”
The witness told the court she had no concerns about Child C at the start of the shift, and that his clinical observations were stable.
In his opening speech, Ben Myers KC, defending, said Child C was vulnerable, especially to infection, and should have been at a specialist children’s hospital.
He asked the witness: “Do you agree he [Child C] was a baby in a potentially fragile condition?” “Yes,” said the witness.
Myers said: “Do you agree, given his size and prematurity and his conditions, there was a risk that he could die?” “Yes,” the witness replied.
Jurors have previously seen messages sent by Letby during the night shift in which she said being in room three was “eating me up”.
She added that she felt she wanted to return to room one where a baby boy – her alleged first victim – had died, to “get the image out of my head”.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
