Angel of death: the missed opportunities to stop Lucy Letby
18.08.2023 - 13:47
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Twice hospital consultants raised concerns about Lucy Letby - but her trial heard they were urged ‘not to make a fuss’.
The 33-year-old baby killer was eventually removed from night shifts - but she carried on attacking infants during day shifts at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Today (18 August) a jury at Manchester Crown Court found Letby guilty of murdering seven babies, and guilty of attempting to murder six others during her time working at the hospital.
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The court previously heard that on two occasions Letby was able to access insulin from a padlocked fridge to poison infants.
The jury heard the keys were passed around nurses even though they should have been held by the nursing shift leader.
After her fourth attack,on Baby D in June 2015, Dr Stephen Brearey, head of the neonatal unit, reviewed the circumstances surrounding the case, and the ‘association’ of Letby to a number of collapses was identified, Letby’s trial was told.
She carried on working on the unit despite this.
Hospital consultants twice raised their concerns about Letby with management, in October 2015 and again in February 2016, the jury was told at Manchester Crown Court.
These concerns were raised in the middle of Letby’s campaign of attacking babies, which started in June 2015 and ended in June 2016.
One of the consultant paediatricians, Dr Ravi Jayaram, told the trial he wished he had gone straight to the police.
“We were also beginning to get a reasonable amount of pressure from senior management at the hospital not to make a fuss. In retrospect, we were all grown-ups and we should have stood up and not listened,” said Dr Jayaram.
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