Lucy Letby told the mother of a premature baby that she thought he was going to die, moments after injecting air into him to kill him.
The woman, a GP, was woken in the middle of the night by panicked nurses after her son, known as Baby C, unexpectedly collapsed.
She was rushed to the neonatal unit, where doctors were frantically trying to revive the baby, and a nurse, whom she had never met before, asked her, “Do you want me to call a priest?”
“Even though I was faced with a situation where my son was receiving CPR, I was still quite confused and disorientated as to what was happening, and until I was asked that question, I didn’t really realise there was a possibility he could die,” she told the public inquiry into Letby’s crimes at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
The mother said: “I asked her and asked her if she thought she was going to die. She said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ At the time, as I said, I didn’t know the nurse’s name, I hadn’t met her before, but I think it was Lucy Letby.”
Lucy Letby (pictured) is serving 15 life sentences after being found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempted murders against one of her victims.
Her son was the second baby killed by Letby, 34, in the space of a week in June 2015.
He was born 10 weeks premature, weighing just 1 pound 12 ounces, by Caesarean section after a difficult pregnancy where his growth was restricted in the womb.
Although he was small, the inquest was told he was not expected to die and doctors were baffled by his sudden collapse and death.
Letby killed him when he was four days old by injecting air into his stomach through his feeding tube, which compromised his breathing.
Also at yesterday’s inquest, the mother of another baby killed by Letby was praised by a judge for “never giving up” in her attempts to find out why her daughter died.
Lady Justice Thirlwall told the sobbing woman she had “done everything” for her son.
Lady Justice Thirlwall, pictured last Monday, presides over the inquest at Liverpool Town Hall.
A court artist’s sketch of Lucy Letby giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court on July 24
Known as Baby D, she was the third child killed by the hospital’s neonatal nurse in two weeks.
During three hours of emotional testimony yesterday, the mother, who cannot be identified, said she contemplated suicide and thought she was “losing her mind” because “nothing made sense” about her baby’s sudden death in June 2015.
She fought to access her daughter’s medical records, rejected the doctor’s explanations for the cause of her death and demanded an investigation.
The mother even hired a lawyer and suggested they call the police, but was initially told it was not a criminal matter.
Lady Justice Thirlwall, who is leading an inquiry into Letby’s crimes, told her: ‘Despite great personal cost, you never gave up and your testimony at the inquest leaves everyone listening in no doubt about your determination and persistence on behalf of your daughter and yourself and your husband.
“You’ve done all you can.”
Lady Justice Thirlwall at Liverpool Town Hall on Monday last week ahead of the hearings
Cheshire Police bodycam footage of Lucy Letby’s arrest in 2018
The hearing in Liverpool was told that baby D was born three weeks early and weighed 6lb 14oz.
She was being treated in the unit for an infection when Letby attacked her three times in a single night shift, eventually killing her with an air injection. The mother also said security cameras inside the hospital’s nursery could have prevented the killing.
As part of the research, all hospitals in England with a neonatal unit were asked whether they had considered installing CCTV following the Letby murder spree.
Baby D’s mother said she had never had a conversation with Letby, but described feeling “very uncomfortable” in her presence and that she “stuck out” as being “weird.”
On the night her daughter died, she recalled Letby “not doing anything helpful” as doctors desperately battled to save her baby, adding: “She was just watching us break down and cry.”
The Liverpool City Council inquiry (pictured last week) is examining how Letby was able to attack babies in the neonatal unit at the Countess and Chester Hospital in 2015 and 2016.
She also described how the doctor trying to revive her daughter had a phone to her ear while performing CPR and later discovered that staff had mistakenly believed it was another victim, Baby B, who had collapsed, not Baby D, and that they had mistakenly called the other child’s mother.
Letby had attacked twins Baby A and Baby B a week earlier, killing Baby A. Baby D’s mother suggested the confusion was created “maliciously” by Letby.
Little D’s mother said that after her daughter’s death, things just “didn’t add up.” Doctors had said the girl was responding to antibiotics, but the official cause of death was a serious infection.
“I didn’t know if what I was doing was the right thing, but I kept thinking: ‘This is my daughter’s voice, I can’t give up here, so I’m going to keep going even if I’m alone,'” she accused the hospital of withholding information from the coroner.
The inquiry has learned that a report by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health sent to parents in April 2017 removed sections relating to Letby.
Baby D’s mother said that if she had known suspicions had been raised about a member of staff, she would have gone to the police herself.
She added: “If the Countess hadn’t failed me in the first place, my daughter wouldn’t have ended up in intensive care, I wouldn’t have ended up sick and broken, and she wouldn’t have been in a place where someone was taking advantage of babies.”
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