A mother of twins walked in on a nurse attempting to murder one of her baby boys who then told her: “Trust me, I’m a nurse,” a court has heard.
Lucy Letby, 32, was trying to kill the five-day-old boy when his mother arrived on the neonatal ward with his milk, jurors were told.
The infant was “acutely distressed” and bleeding from the mouth, the court heard.
The woman, who cannot be named, did not realise Letby was allegedly in the process of attacking her son and was “fobbed off” by the alleged killer.
The boy was one of seven babies allegedly murdered by Letby on the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester hospital, where she worked, between June 2015 and June 2016.
Letby denies seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder, relating to 17 babies in all.
The trial at Manchester crown court heard how the mother of premature twin boys, who can only be named as Baby E and Baby F, arrived at the unit with their milk.
Nick Johnson KC, prosecuting, told the jury she “interrupted Lucy Letby who was attacking [Baby E]”.
He added: “She did not realise it at the time but I’m going to suggest why you can be confident that is what happened. When [she] arrived, [Baby E] was acutely distressed and he was bleeding from his mouth.”
Johnson said Letby allegedly tried to reassure the boy’s mother, telling her the blood was due to a nasogastric tube irritating his throat, adding: “Trust me, I’m a nurse’ – that’s what she [Letby] told the mother.”
The infant, who weighed 1.3kg (just under 3lbs) at birth, rapidly deteriorated and was pronounced dead less than five hours after Letby was seen attacking him, the jury was told.
A doctor present said he “had never seen a baby bleed like this” and that the child lost more than a quarter of his total blood volume, the court heard.
Baby E’s death was initially put down to a gastrointestinal disorder that can occur in premature babies and no postmortem was undertaken. This, Johnson said, was “a big mistake”.
Experts later concluded that Baby E died as a result of gas intentionally injected into his bloodstream and “bleeding indicative of trauma”, the jury was told.
Letby took an “unusual interest” in the twins’ family, searching for them on social media two days after Baby E’s death and several times over the following months – even on Christmas Day 2015, the court heard.
The nurse allegedly “wiped out” the mother’s visit from the medical records then falsely claimed to be in another room when Baby E collapsed. This, the prosecution alleged, was Letby trying to establish an “alibi in someone else’s medical records”.
Jurors were told that Letby then took a “sinister” interested in Baby E’s twin brother, six-day old Baby F.
The nurse allegedly administered a feeding bag laced with insulin to Baby F less than 24 hours after his sibling had died.
The boy survived and when later asked in a police interview why she had searched for his parents on Facebook, Letby said it might have been “to see how [Baby F] was doing”.
The trial also heard on Tuesday how Letby, who was qualified to care for seriously ill newborns, texted a colleague to say it would be “cathartic” to be in a room where a baby had died – allegedly by poisoning – five days earlier.
She told her friend she wanted “to see a living baby in the space that had previously been occupied by a dead baby”, the jury of eight women and four men was told.
Although she was supposed to be caring for a baby in another room, Letby allegedly entered the room of a four-day-old boy and injected him with air through a nasogastric line to his stomach.
As fellow nurses failed to resuscitate the boy, Baby C, she told one colleague: “He’s going,” jurors were told.
Johnson said Letby searched for Baby C’s parents on Facebook hours after his death, adding: “The timing may suggest that it was one of the first things she did when she woke up.”
Another of her alleged victims, a three-month-old child, was left with “irreversible brain damage” after Letby tried three times to kill her by injecting milk and air into her nasogastric tube, jurors were told.
Jurors were told on Tuesday that Letby “was the only constant presence” when three babies died and one suffered a life-threatening collapse in two weeks on the neonatal unit in June 2015.
The defendant, from Hereford, listened from the glass-enclosed dock as the prosecution outlined its case on the second day of her trial on Tuesday. Relatives of some of her alleged victims sat in the public gallery metres to her right.
The trial continues.
