Nurse offered to take photos of dead baby for parents, court hears

“SMILING” nurse Lucy Letby offered to take photographs of a baby girl soon after she had murdered her at the fourth attempt, a court has heard.

The Crown say the 33-year-old harmed the premature infant with injections of air into her feeding tube and bloodstream before she eventually died in the Countess of Chester Hospital’s neo-natal unit in the early hours of October 23, 2015.

Letby denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder 10 others at the unit on various dates between June 2015 and

June 2016.

Yesterday, jurors at Manchester Crown Court began to hear evidence about the nurse’s ninth alleged victim, Child I, who was born at Liverpool Women’s Hospital in August 2015 before she was later transferred to the Countess of Chester.

In a statement read to the court, Child I’s mother said her daughter was about six weeks old when she thought she might be well enough to go home.

The prosecution say Letby, originally from Hereford, went on to make her first attempt to kill Child I during a day shift on September 30.

She is said to have struck again during night shifts on October 12 and 13 before the baby’s fatal collapse later that month.

Child I’s mother said she was called at home in the early hours of October 23 and told to go to the hospital immediately.

On their arrival she saw Letby with another nurse, Ashleigh Hudson, and consultant Dr John Gibbs. She said: “They were working to try to resuscitate (Child I). I heard them all counting times.”

After Child I was pronounced dead, her parents were moved to a private room at visiting time, she said. Nurse Hudson and

Letby asked her if she wanted to bathe Child I’s body, she said, and that the girl’s father initially declined before she agreed.

She said: “I didn’t want to look back and regret not doing it so I said yes. Lucy brought the bath in. She said she could come in and take some photos which we could keep.

“While we were bathing her, Lucy came back in. She was smiling and kept going on about how she was present at the first bath and how (Child I) had loved it. I wished she would just stop talking. Eventually she realised and stopped. It was not something we wanted to hear.

In his opening address, Ben Myers KC said the defence does not accept that Letby caused any harm to Child I and that her series of clinical problems “may well have been inevitable given her extreme prematurity”.

The trial continues today.