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Lucy Letby was forced to listen to a judge’s sentencing remarks she previously refused to hear, as she was found guilty of the attempted murder of a baby at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit.
The nurse, 34, was “caught virtually red-handed” deliberately dislodging the baby girl’s breathing tube by a consultant paediatrician in a nursery room in February 2016, a jury at Manchester Crown Court heard.
On the same day, the baby was transferred to a specialist hospital, where she died three days later – but not as a result of Letby’s actions, said the Crown Prosecution Service.
On Tuesday afternoon, a jury found Letby guilty of attempted murder following a retrial in which the nurse was compelled to hear part of the sentencing remarks she refused to listen to last year.
Almost a year ago, Letby, of Hereford, was convicted by another jury of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others at the hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
But she refused to attend her sentencing hearing and listen to the judge’s comments. Prime minister Rishi Sunak branded Letby “cowardly” as he said the government was looking at changing the law to force criminals to attend sentencing hearings.
However, during the retrial, which took place after last year’s jury could not come to a verdit on the single count of attempted murder, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC spent seven minutes reading a section of the remarks as Letby looked largely to the floor of the dock.
Click here to read our report on the judge’s sentencing remarks last year
During the retrial, the jury heard how Letby targeted the baby, known as Child K, after the infant was moved from the delivery room to the neo-natal unit shortly after her premature birth.
The baby, born at 25 weeks’ gestation and weighing just 692g, was said by the prosecution to be the “epitome of fragility”.
But about 90 minutes after her birth, Letby deliberately dislodged the baby’s breathing tube through which she was being ventilated with air and oxygen.
Letby told the court she did not recall being in nursery at any time during the shift on the day it happened.
But the prosecution said she was caught in the act dislodging the baby girl’s breathing tube by consultant paediatrician Dr Ravi Jayaram, before later interfering with replacement tubes for the newborn on two more occasions in a bid to cover her tracks.
Dr Jayaram told jurors he saw “no evidence” that she had done anything to help the deteriorating baby as he walked in and saw her standing next to the infant’s incubator. He said he heard no call for help from Letby or alarms sounding as Child K’s blood oxygen levels suddenly dropped.
No post-mortem examination was conducted and the cause of death was certified as extreme prematurity and severe respiratory distress syndrome.
More than two years later on a late Friday night in April 2018, Letby searched on Facebook for Child K’s surname.
Mr Johnson KC said it was part of a pattern of similar Facebook searches as he told the jury: “The truth is that Lucy Letby had a fascination with the babies she had murdered and attempted to murder, and with their families. She took pleasure in her murderous handiwork.”
A public inquiry into how Letby was able to commit her crimes on the neo-natal unit is set to begin at Liverpool Town Hall on 10 September.
