Nurse Lucy Letby ‘murdered two triplets immediately after returning from summer vacation to Ibiza’
Nurse Lucy Letby ‘murdered two triplets immediately after returning from a summer holiday in Ibiza’, the jury listens
- Baby O died during Letby’s first shift at the Countess of Chester Hospital
Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby murdered two babies from a set of triplets immediately after returning from a summer holiday in Ibiza, a jury at her trial heard today.
Baby O died during her first shift at the Countess of Chester hospital, while her brother, Baby P, collapsed and died the next day.
A transport team arrived too late to transfer Baby P to Liverpool Hospital for Women. But as they began to prepare to leave, the mother begged the consultant in charge to take her surviving baby in her place.
Before his return to work in June 2016, Letby, now 33, was texting with colleagues about his flight home and the tapas he was already missing.
The social media chat includes a series of messages between her and a consultant registrar that a nursing colleague had earlier suggested she was “flirting” with.
Neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, 33, (pictured) allegedly murdered two babies out of a set of triplets immediately after returning from a summer holiday in Ibiza.
In a conversation, simply type: ‘Boo’.
He responds with a winking emoji.
In other messages the pediatrician and nurse joke about calling in sick so they can go home.
When he offers to bring her something to eat, she replies, ‘Tapas?’ A few minutes later, she adds, “Okay, thanks, I’ve got a few things with me.”
When Letby loses a piece of paper in the drive, she tells him, “Clearly, he should still be in Ibiza.”
Later, the two colleagues find themselves working side by side as a team of doctors work frantically to save first Baby O and then her brother.
Some of the medical notes they wrote at the time of those collapses were shown to the jury when the prosecution began reviewing the evidence related to the deaths of the babies.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies killing seven babies and attempting to kill 10 more between June 2015 and June 2016. She denies all charges.
The mother told jury at Manchester Crown Court that her identical triplets were born three minutes apart on June 21. At the time, Letby was still enjoying her vacation in Ibiza.
Initially, doctors told her there would likely be a shortage of cots at Countess, so she and her babies would likely be transferred to Birmingham, Manchester or Bristol.
But ultimately all three remained in Chester until the youngest triplet’s eventual transfer to LWH.
In a statement read in court, the mother said she was constantly reassured that the three babies were fine.
Letby, originally from Hereford, denies killing seven babies and attempting to kill ten more between June 2015 and June 2016 (pictured: Cradle of Child I)
But on June 23, her partner went down to the neonatal unit. She returned about 15 minutes later in the company of the registrar involved in the text conversations with Letby.
‘(The registrar) came in and said (Baby) O’s stomach had bloated and she needed a little help breathing. He seemed very calm. He said it was normal and there was nothing to worry about.’
But when she went down to the unit a few minutes later, she was greeted by “a scene of chaos.” Baby O was in the intensive care ward and a lot of medical staff were ‘running’.
The same registrar was there, along with a pediatrician and Letby. ‘O’s bunk was now flat, and the team surrounded him. I sat outside in my wheelchair. Lucy was running around fixing things for the doctors. I was going to enter the room marked ‘sterile’.
The trial continues.