British nurse Lucy Letby, sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of murdering seven newborns under her care, firmly denied today, Monday, any attempt to kill another child at the hospital where she works. Letby, 34 years old, is being retried in Manchester since the beginning of June on this attempted murder charge, which the jury in her first trial failed to reach a verdict on.
In August 2023, Letby was convicted of murdering seven newborns and attempting to murder six others at a hospital in Chester (Northwest England) where she worked in 2015 and 2016, making her the worst child killer in modern UK history. Letby injected air intravenously into premature newborns and used their specialized nasogastric tubes to deliver air or an overdose of milk to their stomachs, causing their deaths. The courts have denied her the right to appeal this conviction.
When called to testify in court today, Letby strongly denied attempting to kill "Baby K" while working night shifts in the neonatal unit at the Chester hospital on February 17, 2016. When her lawyer Ben Myers asked, "Did you try to kill this child?" Letby replied, "No." When the lawyer continued, "Did you try to harm her in any way?" she again answered, "No," reiterating her denial of harming any child despite her previous conviction.
In front of the twelve jurors, she claimed she does not remember the events of that night, denying the testimony of the duty pediatrician at the time. The doctor claimed that he entered the intensive care unit less than two hours after "Baby K" was born and saw the nurse standing near the incubator "doing nothing," while the oxygen levels of the premature baby were dangerously dropping without any alarms being triggered.
The next day, the baby was transferred to another hospital due to her extremely premature birth and died three days later, but the prosecutor did not file murder charges against Letby. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecutor urged the jury not to forget the nurse's previous convictions when making their decision. Letby’s lawyer responded by stating, "It is important to emphasize that the previous convictions do not prove this charge."
