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12th October 2022
03:37pm BST
Continuing the prosecution's opening statement for a third day, Nick Johnson KC said the circumstances of the Child I's death were "an extreme example even by the standards of this case".
[caption id="attachment_363138" align="alignnone" width="2048"]
Lucy Letby worked at The Countess of Chester Hospital where she is accused of attacking a number of babies (SWNS)[/caption]
He described the baby as "resilient" but said that "at the fourth attempt, Lucy Letby succeeded in killing her."
On the first occasion Letby, of Hereford, injected the child with air. Then on the second occasion she had stood in the doorway of the girl's darkened room and commented that she looked pale.
When a nurse turned the light on they noticed that Child I was not breathing.
At the third attempt, excess air was also found in the baby's stomach. After being transferred to Arrowe Park Hospital where she stabilised, the bay was taken back to Chester.
When Child I's medical alarm went off following a fourth attempt, another nurse found Letby next to the incubator, the jury was told.
The baby died that morning.
Following Child I's death, Letby and another nurse asked the baby's mother if she would like to bathe her daughter. Letby then came into the room whilst the mother was doing this and watched "smiling," the BBC reports. The nurse later sent a sympathy card to the parents and kept an image of the card on her phone. The court has already heard that Letby would search for the families of some of her alleged victims on Facebook after their deaths. Before she was charged in November 2020, Letby had been arrested on two previous occasions. Letby was initially arrested in July 2018 as part of a major police inquiry into the deaths of 17 babies at the hospital. She was quizzed on suspicion of murdering eight babies and attempting to kill a further six. She was subsequently bailed pending further inquiries. But she was re-arrested in 2019 after being suspected of trying to murder another three infants.
