LONDON: A neonatal nurse went on trial in Britain on Monday, accused of killing seven children in her care and attempting to kill 10 others.
Lucy Latby, 32, has denied murdering five boys and two girls and attempting to kill a further five boys and five girls between June 2015 and June 2016.
She is accused of committing the murder at the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northwest England, where she worked.
Opening the prosecution’s case, solicitor Nick Johnson said the hospital’s neonatal deaths were comparable to other units across the country.
But in the 18 months to January 2015 it saw a “significant” rise in the number of deaths and serious catastrophic damage.
Consultants were worried because the babies who died would deteriorate unexpectedly. Some of the falls did not respond to appropriate treatment.
He told a jury at Manchester Crown Court that others collapsed and then made dramatic recoveries, defying doctors’ “common experience”.
“After searching for a cause, which they were unable to find, the consultants noticed that there was a common denominator in unexplained falls and deaths,” he alleged.
The presence of one of the newborn nurses and that nurse was Lucy Letby. Johnson said the deaths and falls occurred during night shifts when Latby was on shift, then when she went to work during the day.
A review found that two children were poisoned with insulin in the 12 months to mid-2015. He added that the “only reasonable conclusion” could be drawn that it was deliberate.
“It was not an accident,” he said, describing the collapse and deaths of all 17 children as “naturally occurring tragedies”.
Some were injected with air into their blood, others were given insulin or copious amounts of milk, the lawyer said.
“They were all the work of, let’s say, the woman in the dock, who was, let’s say, a constant abusive presence as these 17 children deteriorated,” Johnson alleged.
In all, Letby faces 22 charges – seven of murder and 15 of attempted murder, as he allegedly tried to kill some of the children more than once.
The court was told that the youngest alleged murder victim – a boy who was born prematurely – was just a day old and “fine” but died within 90 minutes of coming on duty at Latby on June 8, 2015. died
Medical experts say his death was consistent with the intentional injection of air or something else into his circulation minutes before he collapsed.
The jury heard that the discoloration on the boy’s skin was consistent with other cases in which Latby is accused of injecting air into the victim’s bloodstream.
Latby tried to kill the boy’s twin sister hours later, it was alleged. He was revived and appeared to be unharmed, Johnson said.
