Children’s nurse Lucy Letby is accused of killing seven children and trying to kill ten more over the course of a year.
Letby, 32, is accused of sabotaging the treatment of others over the course of a year and poisoning two people with insulin.
A few were only a few days or even hours old.
Letby is also alleged to have made numerous attempts to kill some of the newborns while acting as a “constant malevolent presence” on the NHS neo-natal unit.
The methods used varied, according to prosecutor Nick Johnson KC, who told the court that some people received air injections and others received excessive insulin or milk.
Letby, he insisted, was “the common denominator.”
“We claim that Lucy Letby occasionally attempted to kill the same baby more than once,” Mr. Johnson continued.
“Occasionally, a baby that she was able to kill was one that she failed to kill the first time, second time, or in one instance, third time.
Letby had earlier calmly answered “not guilty” to each of the 22 charges that had been read to her while dressed in a dark blue trouser suit and a black top.
The nurse, who had worked in the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit since 2012, allegedly started her campaign by killing three infants over the course of two weeks in June 2015.
Between then and June 2016, she is alleged to have killed five boys and two girls in total.
According to testimony given at Manchester Crown Court, Letby killed two identical brothers on consecutive days.
Five boys and five girls are the alleged victims in the ten attempted murder counts that span the same time period.
On the same day, she allegedly tried to kill the twins.
Letby is also charged with attempting to kill a baby girl three times, twice of which allegedly occurred on the same day.
According to the prosecution, the University of Chester graduate also made three attempts to kill the same baby boy, twice on the same day.
Mr. Johnson told the jury that Countess of Chester is a busy general hospital, and within the maternity unit is a neo-natal unit that cares for premature and ill babies. In that regard, the hospital is similar to many others in the UK, but unlike many other hospitals, a poisoner was at work in the neo-natal unit.
He claimed that an unexpected rise in fatalities and catastrophic failures alarmed consultants.
Before 2015, the mortality statistics in the unit were comparable to those of other similar units, Mr. Johnson testified before the court.
But over the course of the following 18 months or so, both the number of serious catastrophic collapses and the number of infant deaths significantly increased.
“Consultants noticed this increase. Their worry was that infants who were dying had unexpectedly deteriorated and that, in addition to suffering serious collapses, they had also failed to respond to timely and appropriate resuscitation. Some of the babies who did not pass away experienced dramatic collapses followed by equally dramatic recoveries. Their collapses and recoveries defied the treating doctors’ usual experience.
The consultants noticed that all of the unexpected deaths shared Lucy Letby as a neo-natal nurse as their common denominator, he continued.
He testified in court that the majority of the incidents took place while Letby was working the night shift but followed her when she switched to the day shift.
Letby, in his words, was “the constant malevolent presence when things turned for the worse for these 17 children,” he was accused of being.
When Cheshire Police were called, their investigation revealed that “someone had poisoned two children with insulin between the middle of 2015 and the middle of 2016,” according to their findings.
There is a court order prohibiting the identification of any of the alleged victims, their families, and some witnesses connected to the children.
According to Mr. Johnson, Child A, the first victim, died the day after he was born at 31 weeks.
According to a hospital review, the patient’s fatal collapse was consistent with the intentional injection of air or another substance into his circulation just a minute or two before things started to get worse.
“This happened when only Lucy Letby was present,” said Mr. Johnson.
He added that Child B, the older twin sister of Child A, was attacked by Letby at some point during the following three days but managed to survive.
Child F, the first victim of alleged insulin poisoning, was attacked in August 2015, just a few days after the birth of his twin.
However, Child E, the brother of Child F, did not.
According to the prosecution, Letby killed Child E the day before by injecting air once more into the victim’s bloodstream.
Child L, the second infant purportedly poisoned with insulin, was also a twin who lived.
It was claimed that he was assaulted once more a few days after his birth in April 2016.
His brother Child M allegedly received an air injection as well and lived.
Regarding the infants who were allegedly insulin-poisoned, Mr. Johnson stated: “Both boys survived because of the skill of the medical staff.
When the doctors realized their blood sugar had dropped, they learned that low blood sugar can have natural causes.
“What the medical staff did not realise was that the reason was the result of someone poisoning them with insulin. There can be no doubt that these were poisonings.
“The prosecution say that one of the reasons the cause of their problems was not identified and at the time was attributed to a naturally occurring phenomenon was that it simply did not occur to the medical staff that someone in the neo-natal unit would have injected them with insulin.
“Nobody thought that there was someone trying to kill babies in the neo-natal unit.”
He went on: “Lucy Letby was on duty when both were poisoned and we allege she was the poisoner. There’s a very restricted number of people who could have been the poisoner, because entry to a neo- natal unit is closely restricted.
“The prosecution say that the only reasonable conclusion to draw was that somebody poisoned these babies deliberately with insulin.
“These were no accidents and, if we are right about that, it will help you assess the collapses and deaths of other children because someone was sabotaging them or whether they were just tragic coincidences.”
He claimed there was proof Letby had exhibited a “unusual interest” in the relatives of the kids she was accused of abusing.
When the jury of eight men and four women heard evidence that was certain to incite “horror,” the judge, Mr. Justice Goss, had earlier instructed them to “put their emotions to one side.”
The alleged victims’ families as well as Letby’s parents, John, 76, and Susan, 62, were present in court.
