Nurse who allegedly poisoned babies targeted some ‘more than once’, trial hears

A neonatal nurse who allegedly poisoned babies targeted some ‘more than once’, a jury heard.

Lucy Letby, 32, is on trial at Manchester Crown Court is charged with murdering seven babies and faces 15 attempted murder charges involving ten more children. She denies the 22 offences, which all allegedly occurred whilst she was working as a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016.

Opening, prosecutor Nick Johnson KC said that two baby boys, identified only as child F and child L, were poisoned with insulin.

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The court heard that both boys’ blood sugar dropped to dangerous levels, but both boys survived because of the skill of the medical staff who appreciated low blood sugar can have natural causes.

“What the medical staff did not realise was that in both cases, it was the result of someone poisoning them with insulin,” Mr Johnson said.

He added that nobody thought that there was someone 'trying to kill babies' in the neonatal unit.

Mr Johnson said the means by which the babies were harmed and killed varied: sometimes they were injected with air – both intravenously (into their bloodstream) and via the nasogastric tube (into their stomachs) – sometimes they were injected with milk or some other fluid, and sometimes it was insulin.

He added that the constant presence in all events was Ms Letby.

He then showed a chart to the jury which showed when staff were working in relation to each child, and by the process of elimination ‘only one person can have been responsible’.

Prosecutors allege that sometimes Ms Letby tried to kill the same baby more than once – and sometimes a baby that she didn’t