British baby murderer Lucy Letby in court again for attempted killing of premature baby

London:

Convicted British child murderer Lucy Letby was brought back to court on Wednesday, accused of attempting to murder a baby girl in the neonatal ward of the hospital where she worked.

Letby, 34, is accused of attempting to kill the premature baby, referred to in court as Baby K, at the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England in February 2016.

At the start of the trial, prosecutor Nick Johnson claimed that the former nurse was “virtually caught red-handed” by a senior doctor when she moved the infant's breathing tube.

“The nurse in charge had (Child K) connected to a ventilator that was breathing for her, and (Child K) was connected to another machine that was checking her heart rate and saturation,” he said.

The lawyer explained that alarms would be triggered if either the baby's heart rate or the oxygen saturation in the blood fell below a certain level.

But then pediatrician Ravi Jayaram entered the nursery and saw Letby standing over the child while his oxygen levels dropped without the alarm going off.

“Not only that, Lucy Letby did nothing,” the lawyer claimed.

“We consider that the fact that Lucy Letby did nothing and that the alarms did not go off is evidence that it was Lucy Letby, the convicted murderer, who moved the pipe,” he told the jury.

“We say Lucy Letby was virtually caught red-handed by Dr. Jayaram.”

The court was told that Letby was found guilty of the murder of seven babies at the facility and the attempted murder of six more babies between 2015 and 2016 in a trial that ended last year.

Due to reporting restrictions, the identities of the surviving and dead children in this case cannot be published.

The jury was told that at the first trial the panel was unable to reach a verdict on the attempted murder charge in connection with Baby K, leading to a retrial.

Johnson told the jury that Letby's “status as a multiple murderer and attempted murderer is an important piece of evidence for you to consider when considering whether we have proven that she attempted to kill Baby K.”

Letby, who was in the dock when the prosecutor opened the case, denies one count of attempted murder.

Her lawyer, Ben Myers, said: “It is important to stress that the convictions do not prove this allegation… We are saying that the evidence does not support the allegations. It simply does not.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)