A former nurse is on trial for allegedly murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 more in the neonatal unit of a hospital in northwest England, News About Nigeria reports.
Lucy Letby, 33, has denied all the charges against her and testified in court for the first time on Tuesday. Letby was accused of the death of the babies in 2016 after a letter from the Royal College of Nursing Union was sent to her. She was initially put on clerical duties before being arrested in July 2018.
Letby faces a total of 22 charges, including seven counts of murder and 15 counts of attempted murder. Prosecutors have presented notes allegedly written by Letby, including one that read “I am evil I did this” and another that stated “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them. I am a horrible evil person.”
The alleged victims include a baby boy who died just 90 minutes after Letby came on duty in June 2015. Medical experts believe his death was consistent with a deliberate injection of air or something else into his circulation. Discoloration on the boy’s skin was also consistent with some of the other cases in which Letby is accused of injecting air into the victim’s bloodstream.
Letby has cared for hundreds of babies during her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital from 2015 to 2016. Her trial has been ongoing for the past seven months at Manchester Crown Court.
Lucy Letby trial as it happened.
Letby said it was “sickening” when she discovered she was being blamed for a number of baby deaths while doing the job she “loved”.
“It was devastating. I don’t think you could be accused of anything worse than that,” she said.
Asked by her barrister if she ever did anything “meant to hurt any of them”, she replied: “No, I only did my best to care for them.”
Letby said she never wanted to harm any baby, saying it was “completely against everything that being a nurse is… I’m there to help and to care”.
The defendant told the court about the three times she was arrested by police, on suspicion of murder and attempted murder of babies – calling it “traumatising”.
Letby became tearful on several occasions during Tuesday’s evidence, such as when shown a photo of her bedroom during a police search.
She also appeared to cry and wipe her eyes when her barrister, Ben Meyers KC, asked how hard it was to cope with her situation.
“Everything about me and about my life, and the hopes I had for the future, everything is just gone,” said Letby – who later said she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Among items recovered during the search of Letby’s home in Chester included a Post-it note found in a diary.
Among words written on the note were, in capitals, “I am evil I did this”, the court has heard.
Letby also wrote: “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them. I am a horrible evil person.”
Mr Meyers asked her: “When you say killed them on purpose does that mean you’ve gone and done something intentionally?”
Letby replied: “No”.
Asked to explain, she said it meant she hadn’t “been good enough and that I’ve somehow failed in my duties and my competencies”.
Letby said she’d written it because “I felt at the time I had done something wrong and I thought I’m such an awful, evil person… that I had made mistakes and not known”.
Mr Myers asked: “What did you thought you had done?”
“That somehow I had been incompetent and I had done something wrong to affect these babies. I felt I must be responsible in some way,” Letby replied.
She said the scrawled note “was a way of me expressing how I felt at the time that I wasn’t able to say to anyone else”.
Family of the alleged victims – who cannot be named – watched from the public gallery as Letby gave evidence, as did her own parents.
Letby, from Hereford, denies all the allegations.
The trial continues.
