2023-08-18 13:55:12
The British nurse Lucy Letby, 33, has been found guilty of the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of another six in a hospital in Chester (northwest England) between 2015 and 2016, as reported by the Court of the Manchester crown.
During the trial, the evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office indicated that Letby ended the lives of the children, injecting them with air with an intravenous syringe while working at the Countess health center.
The woman, who was already suspected of the crimes since 2018 -when she was first arrested-, was arrested once more in 2020 and charged by the police following receiving authorization from the Crown Prosecutor’s Office.
Letby worked in the neonatal ward at the Countess of Chester Hospital. Last year she had denied the murders of five boys and two girls and the attempted murder of ten other babies between June 2015 and June 2016.
Lucy Letby is detained by police, in Chester, Britain, in this screenshot obtained from an undated Handout video obtained by Archyde.com on August 17, 2023. Cheshire Constabulary/Handout via REUTERS/File
However, prosecutor Nick Johnson had told the jury in Manchester how the hospital’s neonatal unit had seen a “significant” increase in death rate over 18 months from January 2015.
“It’s a hospital like many others in the UK, but unlike other hospitals and neonatal wards in the country, there was a poisoner in the Chester hospital ward,” he had said.
Pediatric advisors at the center became concerned in June 2015 regarding the higher-than-usual number of newborn deaths.
Many of them were described as “unexplained” or “unexpected”, according to a report published in July 2016 by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
This undated Cheshire Police handout photo shows a handwritten note from neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, obtained by Archyde.com on July 25, 2023. Cheshire Constabulary/Handout via REUTERS/File
“After looking for a cause, the advisers realized that the deaths or fainting had a common denominator,” explained the prosecutor.
“The presence of a nurse, and that nurse was Lucy Letby,” she said, noting that many of the deaths occurred at night, when she was on call.
“When Lucy Letby was moved to daytime, fainting and deaths were moved to daytime,” he added.
According to one study, two babies were poisoned with insulin and “the only plausible conclusion” is deliberate poisoning, according to Johnson.
Keep reading:
Shock in the UK: a nurse was arrested for murdering eight babies and trying to kill nine othersThe terrible story of the serial killer nurse who killed 7 premature babies that she was supposed to take care ofThey were supposed to take care of them, but they were killed: the shocking stories of the killer nurses children’s serials
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