UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #2

[Marantz4250b]

Just catching up from overnight and reading comments there is a lot of discussion about LL being the common denominator because she was on duty.
Also that the hospital suspected LL when they reported the matter to the police.

To me what's so much more important is that she carried out direct clinical interventions involving acess lines (infusion in A and blood gases B) just prior to collapse.

Air embolism and insulin overdose will cause a very rapid deterioration especially air embolism.

This is quite damning imo but will be interested to see if this is the case for all babies.

In one of the cases though she was known to be in the company of another nurse preparing antibiotics with when the alarms went off. This tends to suggest that she wasn't actually doing anything with the patient at the time.

 

[Supernovae]

You need to be linking in with @gill1109. Have you read his contributions on this thread?

Yes and I'm aware of his wider work. For example from 9 and half minutes here elaborates the problem of cryptic statistical reasoning:

 

[merrypason]

In one of the cases though she was known to be in the company of another nurse preparing antibiotics with when the alarms went off. This tends to suggest that she wasn't actually doing anything with the patient at the time.

Hmmm, hadn't she done the blood gases and helped with the liquid feed just 15 minutes before collapse/alarms went off though?

"The court also heard the prosecution case in respect of Child B, who was stable after initial breathing difficulties at birth, which had required ventilator support.

Letby was not the designated nurse for Child B on her night-shift, but Letby had taken Child B's blood gases at 12.16am, and had started a bag of liquid feed with the assistance of the designated nurse, through an IV line, into Child B.

At about 12.30am, Child B's alarm sounded and Letby had called the nurse to the child's incubator. Child B was not breathing.

A crash call was put out at 12.33am, and resuscitation began. The nurse noted purple blotches and white patches all over Child B's body, and the heart rate had dropped.

In a witness statement three years later, Letby's colleague, the designated nurse for Child B, said she and Letby had been preparing antibiotics at the time of the collapse."

Mr Johnson told the court that independent medical expert Dr Dewi Evans concluded Child B was "subjected to form of sabotage" that night.

 

[JosieJo]

Perhaps it's the truth?

I struggle with that ..especially as it suggested it was on multiple occasions.
Even if you can't remember individual searches you would be able to say something like ..."I can't remember specifically but I have searched before to see how the parents are" or something similar

 

[JosieJo]

In one of the cases though she was known to be in the company of another nurse preparing antibiotics with when the alarms went off. This tends to suggest that she wasn't actually doing anything with the patient at the time.

But that would fit ..it wouldn't be instant necessarily but a nurse would not stand by the side of a baby after a procedure..they have to quickly move on to the next job

 

[Pimlipo]

Perhaps. But I’ve (we all have, right!?) looked up plenty of stranger Facebook pages due to this interest in true crime. It would be absolutely impossible to say to LE truthfully that I can’t remember doing it. Maybe specific names, but the act of searching these people you can’t just forget.

 

[merrypason]

[Dates edited] Reading about child A and B again.

8th June
7.30-8pm LL starts shift
8.10pm Letby began administering fluids to Child A using an intravenous line at around at which point the baby was stable and had good blood saturation levels and a normal heart rate. [no one else present with Child A or in the ward, as no one else was around to help when he collapsed]
8.20pm Child A stopped breathing, alarm sounds, consultant arrive
8.58pm Child A dies after all resuscitation fails

Johnson said: "[The consultants] responded to the emergency and both noted an unusual discolouration on [Child A's] abdominal skin, with flitting patches of pink over blue skin that seemed to appear and disappear, unlike rashes caused by an infection. Neither doctor had ever previously seen such skin discolouration.

9th June
12.16pm LL does blood gases for Child B (A's twin) and began administering fluids to Child B using an intravenous line with support from designated nurse [despite not being B's designated nurse herself]
12.33pm Child B stops breathing, crash call put out resuscitation begins
The nurse noted purple blotches and white patches all over Child B's body, and the heart rate had dropped.
Child B recovers

Mr Johnson said: "Dr Dewi Evans reviewed all the medical records. He concluded that Child A was a well infant in a satisfactory condition immediately prior to the fatal collapse. He suggested that the collapse was consistent with a deliberate injection of air or something else into Child A's blood stream a minute or two prior to his collapse.

Mr Johnson said both Dr Evans and Dr Bohin concluded Child B had been "sabotaged" by having air injected into her circulation via an intravenous line. Both concluded that the strange skin discolouration could only be explained by air in the bloodstream

What surprised me is, if you have just lost a new born baby after administering fluids via IV, would you not be extra cautious when doing it the next day to his twin sister? I would have assumed anyone would be extra careful or have considered that it could be related to the IV feed and have been more cautious. So I can see why they are raising her presence as the issue.

I guess the defence will have to prove that the babies didn't die from air being injected OR she did it by mistake (though with both happening within a few hours, her being the second most senior nurse in the ward AND this being a common error to watch out for is a tough ask)

Also raises the question WHY she had Child B's handover sheet if it wasn't her patient and the designated nurse was on duty? One thing to have your own handover sheet, but why someone else's?

 

[Sarahlou]

Yes I cant understand why she wouldsay she doesn't remember doing it

Yeah that's got to be a lie. You don't forget repeatedly searching for the victims families on Facebook. It reminds me of someone I know who will compulsively lie even when clearly caught out.

 

[ConcernedThirdParty]

The police didn’t jump to criminal intent either. The recommendation from the RHPC report was for the hospital to further investigate the cases more closely as theirs was a broader review.

The police were then called in who brought in yet another team of independent clinicians to do their own review. These are the doctors who did forensic evidence/interviews and concluded 2 of the deaths certainly were deliberate. Now I’m sure consultants and others raised suspicions about LL and she was on their radar, hence being moved to admin duties. But the reason the police brought in unrelated independent reviewers would be to not jump to conclusions or conduct a witch hunt on the say so of a few professionals. That’s why this has taken 6 years and she wasn’t arrested for all the deaths at the same time and the charges happened over a period of 2 years. 6 years and counting is a long time to invest police resources in a case, they don’t do that lightly. Obviously it wasn’t as cut and dry but there’s 6 months of evidence to be presented on both sides.

Think this is the key difference between this and many other similar cases -(1) 2 sets of independent clinicians reviewed the cases and came to similar conclusions. It wasn’t just hospital and trust staff’s opinion or just the police. It would have to be a conspiracy spanning multiple organisations and doctors if she was scapegoated …(2) she operated on a highly restricted neo natal ward, which is different to other wards. It’s more secluded and access will be for certain personnel only, so saying she was the only one on shift or attending to the babies is relevant. Otherwise it would have to be a ghost. (3) I don’t think with Lucia, there were any charges of multiple attempts on the same patient? It’s a lot harder to plead ignorance or scapegoating if it’s happened to the same child by the same person.

MOO

Saying she was the only one on shift is only relevant if you know for certain there was a murder and you're just trying to work out who had opportunity. If they could prove a deliberate air embolism was caused in both babies, it's very damming that she was with them just before, and that she was the only person present both times.

But an air embolism could be accidental, or equipment failure, bad placement etc and we don't know conclusively that it was air embolism. Rather doctors at the time found no definitive cause and if those were the only two incidents in 2015, no one would be talking about them further. As more and more (but still only a handful) deaths happened, more scrutiny was applied, and more effort to find any common cause. It does seem the air embolism only became a theory after they began considering foul play.

It's also very difficult to determine insulin overdose. It doesn't seem like anyone suspected that at the time in the case of the first child, this seems to be a theory that again appeared after they began looking for ways it could have been murder. If insulin overdose is difficult or impossible to determine with certainty, and multiple reviews closer to the time didn't suggest it - how much confidence can we have in the independent experts who say it was definitely murder by insulin overdose when they most certainly were aware they were being consulted over a suspected murder?

I struggle with that ..especially as it suggested it was on multiple occasions.
Even if you can't remember individual searches you would be able to say something like ..."I can't remember specifically but I have searched before to see how the parents are" or something similar

If you dug out my whole Facebook search history, some of the searches I'd remember, some of them I would not, but I'd believe the Facebook search history if it said I searched for them. It sounded like a specific answer to a specific question about a specific search at a specific time. Surely she was asked multiple times about searches for different people at different times, it doesn't seem to be suggesting she consistently claimed to have no memory of any of it.

 

[Tortoise]

Reading about child A and B again. It seems like on the same day:

7.30-8pm LL starts shift
8.10pm Letby began administering fluids to Child A using an intravenous line at around at which point the baby was stable and had good blood saturation levels and a normal heart rate. [no one else present with Child A or in the ward, as no one else was around to help when he collapsed]
8.20pm Child A stopped breathing, alarm sounds, consultant arrive
8.58pm Child A dies after all resuscitation fails

Johnson said: "[The consultants] responded to the emergency and both noted an unusual discolouration on [Child A's] abdominal skin, with flitting patches of pink over blue skin that seemed to appear and disappear, unlike rashes caused by an infection. Neither doctor had ever previously seen such skin discolouration.

12.16pm LL does blood gases for Child B (A's twin) and began administering fluids to Child B using an intravenous line with support from designated nurse [despite not being B's designated nurse herself]
12.33pm Child B stops breathing, crash call put out resuscitation begins
The nurse noted purple blotches and white patches all over Child B's body, and the heart rate had dropped.
Child B recovers

Mr Johnson said: "Dr Dewi Evans reviewed all the medical records. He concluded that Child A was a well infant in a satisfactory condition immediately prior to the fatal collapse. He suggested that the collapse was consistent with a deliberate injection of air or something else into Child A's blood stream a minute or two prior to his collapse.

Mr Johnson said both Dr Evans and Dr Bohin concluded Child B had been "sabotaged" by having air injected into her circulation via an intravenous line. Both concluded that the strange skin discolouration could only be explained by air in the bloodstream

What surprised me is, if you have just lost a new born baby after administering fluids via IV, would you not be extra cautious when doing it a few hours later to his twin sister? I would have assumed anyone would be extra careful or have considered that it could be related to the IV feed and have been more cautious. So I can see why they are raising her presence as the issue.

I guess the defence will have to prove that the babies didn't die from air being injected OR she did it by mistake (though with both happening within a few hours, her being the second most senior nurse in the ward AND this being a common error to watch out for is a tough ask)

Also raises the question WHY she had Child B's handover sheet if it wasn't her patient and the designated nurse was on duty? One thing to have your own handover sheet, but why someone else's?

Child B's collapse was about 28 hours after the death of child A, not the same night but the following night.

see post UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #2

 

[Francesca]

How are they ever going to compensate this woman if it turns out she is found not guilty? I hope it doesn't all get swept under the rug and they just go "oops sorry". Didn't that nurse a few years ago get a pitiful amount in compensation when she was found to be innocent?

I agree. I don't mind them being cautious about medical details, but having her name and face in the media contradicts a fair trial in my opinion. It's such an emotive case, that if she's found Not Guilty, she'll be in more danger from vigilantes outside prison than within.

 

[JosieJo]

Saying she was the only one on shift is only relevant if you know for certain there was a murder and you're just trying to work out who had opportunity. If they could prove a deliberate air embolism was caused in both babies, it's very damming that she was with them just before, and that she was the only person present both times.

But an air embolism could be accidental, or equipment failure, bad placement etc and we don't know conclusively that it was air embolism. Rather doctors at the time found no definitive cause and if those were the only two incidents in 2015, no one would be talking about them further. As more and more (but still only a handful) deaths happened, more scrutiny was applied, and more effort to find any common cause. It does seem the air embolism only became a theory after they began considering foul play.

It's also very difficult to determine insulin overdose. It doesn't seem like anyone suspected that at the time in the case of the first child, this seems to be a theory that again appeared after they began looking for ways it could have been murder. If insulin overdose is difficult or impossible to determine with certainty, and multiple reviews closer to the time didn't suggest it - how much confidence can we have in the independent experts who say it was definitely murder by insulin overdose when they most certainly were aware they were being consulted over a suspected murder?


If you dug out my whole Facebook search history, some of the searches I'd remember, some of them I would not, but I'd believe the Facebook search history if it said I searched for them. It sounded like a specific answer to a specific question about a specific search at a specific time. Surely she was asked multiple times about searches for different people at different times, it doesn't seem to be suggesting she consistently claimed to have no memory of any of it.

I definitely hear you on both points..we need to hear the evidence...regarding the embolus though ..accidentally administering air is rare but if it presents that she was administering interventions on multiple occasions where this occurred an accident becomes difficult to consider

 

[Francesca]

Saying she was the only one on shift is only relevant if you know for certain there was a murder and you're just trying to work out who had opportunity. If they could prove a deliberate air embolism was caused in both babies, it's very damming that she was with them just before, and that she was the only person present both times.

But an air embolism could be accidental, or equipment failure, bad placement etc and we don't know conclusively that it was air embolism. Rather doctors at the time found no definitive cause and if those were the only two incidents in 2015, no one would be talking about them further. As more and more (but still only a handful) deaths happened, more scrutiny was applied, and more effort to find any common cause. It does seem the air embolism only became a theory after they began considering foul play.

It's also very difficult to determine insulin overdose. It doesn't seem like anyone suspected that at the time in the case of the first child, this seems to be a theory that again appeared after they began looking for ways it could have been murder. If insulin overdose is difficult or impossible to determine with certainty, and multiple reviews closer to the time didn't suggest it - how much confidence can we have in the independent experts who say it was definitely murder by insulin overdose when they most certainly were aware they were being consulted over a suspected murder?


If you dug out my whole Facebook search history, some of the searches I'd remember, some of them I would not, but I'd believe the Facebook search history if it said I searched for them. It sounded like a specific answer to a specific question about a specific search at a specific time. Surely she was asked multiple times about searches for different people at different times, it doesn't seem to be suggesting she consistently claimed to have no memory of any of it.

It would be more significant if she had a suspicious Google search history. The fact that they are talking about her Facebook search history shows how clean her actual Google history was. You can bet the prosecution would be talking about any searches for poisons, infant autopsies or similar murder cases.

 

[Tortoise]

Sorry I'm not available for posting live updates today. Although I might be able to jump in here and there, or post them tonight if no one else can.

 

[Supernovae]

Court's back in:

Recap: Prosecution opens trial of Lucy Letby accused of Countess of Chester Hospital baby murders

THE trial of former Countess of Chester Hospital nurse Lucy Letby, who is accused of multiple baby murders, is due to finalise its jury and hear…

www.chesterstandard.co.uk

 

[Supernovae]

It's likely they went through her internet history with a fine tooth comb to try to find anything directly incriminating or failing that could be used to make her look weird. If this is the best they can do in that regard it's not a particularly good best.

 

[Rhomal]

Interesting comments. Can you imagine if this nurse is innocent, what she must be feeling right now. Absolutely horrific. Surely the possibility of poor equipment or poor hygiene could also be a factor. I remember incidents of hospital equipment which were meant to be sterile being found to have old hardened blood on them.
I hope the truth is found, whatever that may be.

 

[merrypason]

Child B's collapse was about 28 hours after the death of child A, not the same night but the following night.

see post UK - Nurse Lucy Letby Faces 22 Charges - 7 Murder/15 Attempted Murder of Babies #2

Thanks! Have edited my post. Ok, that's not as bad as being a few hours apart but still close enough to have everyone be extra alert you'd think.

 

[cuecard]

Interesting comments. Can you imagine if this nurse is innocent, what she must be feeling right now. Absolutely horrific. Surely the possibility of poor equipment or poor hygiene could also be a factor. I remember incidents of hospital equipment which were meant to be sterile being found to have old hardened blood on them.
I hope the truth is found, whatever that may be.

If it was poor equipment, I reckon you’d have seen it fail or perform poorly in rapid succession with numerous patients which would have alerted those in charge rather than over a lengthy period of time like a year. That said, you’d like to think they have checked the equipment thoroughly to make sure that was not a factor.

 

[Cherwell]

Yes I cant understand why she wouldsay she doesn't remember doing it

I think in her situation, being arrested for murder, and especially if she's innocent, she might just have been traumatised and defensive. She might have more to say about it now.