Former nurse Lucy Letby, convicted last year of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six others, has told an English court she had never harmed nor intended to harm a child in her care.
Letby, 34, was found guilty last August of the multiple murders while she was working as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, between June 2015 and June 2016.
The former nurse is on trial at Manchester Crown Court charged with one count of attempted murder of another baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016.
Letby was asked by her defence lawyer Ben Myers on Monday if she had attempted to kill Child K. “No,” she replied, denying she had intended to do the baby any harm.
Asked if she accepted she had ever intended harming any baby in her care given her convictions, Letby replied: “No, I don’t.”
Child K was born prematurely at 25 weeks and was connected to a ventilator and other machines monitoring her heart rate and oxygen levels.
Soon after the birth, while other staff were absent, the prosecution say senior doctor Ravi Jayaram entered the room finding the baby’s breathing tube dislodged, alarms which should have sounded had become disabled, and Letby standing there “doing nothing”.
Letby denied that she had displaced the breathing tube, and said she had no recollection of events that night. She also said she could not recall researching the baby’s name on Facebook two years later or why she would have done it.
Cape Times