Lucy Letby was forced to listen to judge’s sentencing remarks she previously refused to hear, it emerged, as she was found guilty of the attempted murder of a baby at the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit.
The nurse, 34, was “caught virtually red-handed” deliberately dislodging the baby girl’s breathing tube by a consultant paediatrician in a nursery room at the unit in February 2016.
Dr Ravi Jayaram told jurors he saw “no evidence” that she had done anything to help the deteriorating baby, known as Child K, as he saw her standing next to the infant’s incubator.
The same day, the baby was transferred to a specialist hospital, where she died three days later – but not as a result of Letby’s actions, said the Crown Prosecution Service.
On Tuesday afternoon, a jury of six women and six men at Manchester Crown Court found her guilty of attempted murder following a retrial.
The verdict comes almost a year after Letby, of Hereford, was convicted by another jury of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others at the hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.
A verdict on the allegation concerning Child K could not be reached and a retrial was ordered on that single count.
Letby targeted Child K after the infant was moved from the delivery room to the neo-natal unit shortly after her premature birth. The baby, born at 25 weeks’ gestation and weighing just 692g, was said by the prosecution to be the “epitome of fragility”.
About 90 minutes after her birth, Letby deliberately dislodged the baby’s breathing tube through which she was being ventilated with air and oxygen.
During the retrial, Letby told the court she did not recall being in nursery at any time during the shift on the day it happened. She said she did nothing to harm Child K and had not intended to, or tried to, harm any baby in her care as she maintained her innocence.
But the prosecution said she was caught int he act dislodging the baby girl’s breathing tube by consultant paediatrician Dr Jayaram, before later interfering with replacement tubes for the newborn on two more occasions in a bid to cover her tracks.
No post-mortem examination was conducted and the cause of death was certified as extreme prematurity and severe respiratory distress syndrome.
More than two years later on a late Friday night in April 2018, Letby searched on Facebook for Child K’s surname.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said it was part of a pattern of similar Facebook searches as he told the jury: “The truth is that Lucy Letby had a fascination with the babies she had murdered and attempted to murder, and with their families. She took pleasure in her murderous handiwork.”
A public inquiry into how Letby was able to commit her crimes on the neo-natal unit is set to begin at Liverpool Town Hall on September 10.