British nurse Lucy Letby, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2023 after being convicted of killing seven infants under her care, appeared in court again on Wednesday facing charges of attempting to kill another newborn at the hospital where she worked. Letby (34 years old) is accused of attempting to kill a newborn girl, referred to as "Baby K" in court, at Countess of Chester Hospital in Northwest England in February 2016. Prosecutor Nick Johnson indicated that a pediatrician caught the former nurse "in the act" while she was manipulating a breathing tube placed for the newborn.
Letby was convicted in August of seven counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder targeting infant children at Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016, making her the worst child killer in modern British history. British courts decided in late May that Letby has no option to appeal this conviction. However, at the end of the first trial, the jury did not reach a verdict on six other attempted murder charges she faced. The new trial pertains to one of those children, "Baby K," and is expected to last between two to three weeks.
Lucy Letby denied the attempted murder of the infant on Wednesday. Her defense attorney, Ben Myers, stated, "It is important to emphasize that the previous convictions do not prove this accusation." For his part, the prosecutor urged the jury not to forget the nurse's prior convictions when reaching their decision. Letby, who maintained her innocence throughout the ten-month trial, was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, a severity rarely seen in English court judgments.
Lucy worked in the intensive care unit at Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, Northwest England. The murders occurred between June 2015 and June 2016, during which the nurse injected air into the bloodstream of newborns or used their nasal feeding tubes to deliver air, or gave them an overdose of milk into their stomachs.
