A British neonatal nurse serving a life sentence for killing seven infants and plotting to kill six more was found guilty Tuesday of trying to kill another baby in her care.
Lucy Lettby, 34, tried to murder the baby girl, known as Child K, at Countess of Chester Hospital in northwest England in February 2016, a jury that failed to reach a verdict on that charge in a previous trial found.
Nurse Lucy Letby ‘arrested red-handed’ while removing premature baby’s breathing tube: prosecutors
Letby, who testified he had never harmed a child, was found guilty at Manchester Crown Court in August last year of most of the charges, which took place in the hospital’s neonatal ward between June 2015 and June 2016.
On Tuesday, a different jury found her guilty of attempting to kill the “extremely premature” baby girl by removing her breathing tube in the early hours of Feb. 17, 2016.
An undated distribution file photograph issued by Cheshire Police shows serial child killer Lucy Lettby convicted of the attempted murder of a female infant. Lettby, a British neonatal nurse serving a life sentence for the murder of seven infants and the attempted murder of six more, was found guilty on Tuesday, July 2, 2024, of attempting to kill another infant in her care. (Cheshire Police via The Associated Press)
The baby’s parents gasped and cried as the verdict was read after three-and-a-half hours of deliberation.
Letby showed no emotion.
Senior prosecutor Nicola Wyn Williams said doctors found Letby had removed the baby’s breathing machine and then stood there doing nothing as the baby struggled. She added that Letby removed the breathing tube two more times over the next few hours and “attempted to make the first removal appear an accident and to conceal the evidence.”
“This was the act of a cold-blooded, premeditated killer,” she said. “Staff at this facility had to imagine the unthinkable that one of their own would deliberately harm and kill a baby in their care.”
Dr. Ravi Jayaram, a paediatrician at the hospital, told the jury he walked into the hospital and saw Letby standing next to the newborn’s incubator, but he saw “no evidence” that Letby did anything to help the baby.
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Letby told the six-woman, six-man jury that he had no recollection of any such events. He denied harming K, adding that he had not committed any of the criminal offences for which he was convicted.
Letby is serving a life sentence without the possibility of release – the maximum punishment possible under British law, which does not allow the death penalty – and is one of only three other women to have received such a harsh sentence in the UK.
