A nurse accused of murdering seven babies at a neonatal unit told the mother of one of the infants she killed “trust me” after the parent walked in on her attacking the child, a court heard.
The mother interrupted Lucy Letby attacking her son but did not realise it at the time, jurors were told.
The baby, child E, was “distressed” and bleeding from the mouth when his mother arrived. Letby is said to have tried to reassure her, telling the mother: “Trust me, I’m a nurse.”
Letby, 32, has denied murdering five boys and two girls and attempting to murder another five boys and five girls at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. She is alleged to have tried to murder some of the babies multiple times.
On the second day of the prosecution opening at Manchester Crown Court, Nick Johnson KC said child E, a twin boy, was murdered via an injection of air into the bloodstream.
On the evening of August 3 2015, child E’s mother visited her son at the neonatal unit. Mr Johnson said: "We say that she interrupted Lucy Letby who was attacking [child E], although she did not realise it at the time."
When the mother arrived, her son was "distressed" and bleeding from the mouth, the court heard. Johnson said the mother recalled Letby tried to reassure her and told her a registrar would review the youngster’s condition and she should leave the unit.
"’Trust me, I’m a nurse’. That’s what she told [the mother]," said Mr Johnson. "We suggest she was fobbed off by Lucy Letby."
Child E went on to suffer significant blood loss later in the evening, with a treating registrar saying he had never encountered such a large bleed in a small baby.
Following child E’s death in the early hours of August 4, Letby is alleged to have made "fraudulent" nursing notes which were "false, misleading and designed to cover her tracks".
Mr Johnson said Letby went on to show a "very unusual interest" in child E’s family, searching for them on social media two days after the baby’s death and again on numerous occasions in the following months, including on Christmas Day.
Earlier, the court heard how Letby searched for one of the baby’s parents on Facebook hours after killing the five-day-old boy by injecting air into his stomach through a nose tube.
Letby killed the baby boy, child C, only six days after murdering for the first time, jurors were told.
Letby’s first alleged murder, of child A, is said to have happened on June 8 2015, with the nurse accused of injecting air into the boy’s bloodstream and similarly attacking his twin sister, child B, causing her to collapse.
Mr Johnson told the court that child C died because the air injected into his stomach made him unable to breathe and he suffered a cardiac arrest.
The boy was born prematurely at 30 weeks on June 10, 2015, weighing only 800 grams, and despite going into intensive care was in good condition. On the night shift on June 13 and into the next day, Letby was working but child C was in the care of another nurse.
Child C’s nurse was at a nursing station when the baby’s monitor sounded an alarm at about 11.15pm. When she got to his room, Letby was stood by his incubator – the third time in the space of a week after a baby had collapsed, showing the defendant’s alleged "constant malevolent presence", jurors heard. Letby is said to have told the other nurse: "He’s going. He’s going."
Mr Johnson said Letby sent a text message to an off-duty colleague saying she wanted to be in child C’s room as it would be "cathartic – in other words, would help her wellbeing – to see a living baby in the space previously occupied by a dead baby – child A – but she had been put in another room."
Despite several hours of resuscitation attempts, child C was pronounced dead at 5.58am on June 14.
A review by a medical expert said "the only feasible mechanism" for the air in his body, which caused his collapse, was someone deliberately injecting it through his nose tube. Mr Johnson said an independent pathologist who reviewed the case concluded child C died because his breathing became compromised and he suffered a cardiac arrest.
Mr Johnson told jurors: "If you are trying to murder a child in a neonatal unit, it is a fairly effective way of doing it. It doesn’t really leave much trace."
He said on the afternoon of June 14, 2015 – hours after child C died – the defendant searched on Facebook for the baby’s parents. Mr Johnson suggested that from the timings, this was "one of the first things she did when waking up" after she had finished her shift at about 8am.
“Lucy Letby was the only person working on the night shift when child C died who had also been working on either of the shifts when child A died and his twin sister Child B collapsed,” he added.
The trial continues.
Press Association contributed to this report
