I'm personally in disbelief about LL because she appears so incredibly middle of the road and quite plain, slightly dull, possibly slightly 'frumpy' for her age but not much, and very average indeed whilst also being extremely hard working and having never stood out for anything unusual as far as we know yet. Hardly the profile of a serious offender - is there any precedence for this!?
BBM
I must take issue with your statement that LL never stood out for anything unusual.
There are numerous examples of unusual incidents in the evidence we've heard. I will summarise them and then quote the evidence below this -
1. taking medical notes home and not returning them, including for one baby she wasn't in his nursery that night;
2. not looking after a very sick baby even when specifically asked to;
3. not coming away from a family when asked to by her supervisor;
4. going in nursery 1 and doing meds in there after the shift leader said no to her request;
5. not following consent protocols for hand/footprints and photos and falsely noting that she had followed them;
6. telling a mother she thought her baby was going to die;
7. being inappropriate with grieving parents with a ventilated basket;
8. sending a sympathy card to one family;
9. standing and watching babies who were collapsing and not helping;
10. allegedly telling a mother why her baby was bleeding and telling her to leave;
11. allegedly omitting information from medical notes and inventing an absent doctor's advice;
12. leaving during CPR to sign for medication for a baby in another room;
13. not knowing the weight of a baby she had cared for for 3 12-hour nightshifts;
14. telling a nurse at handover that a baby had vomited and collapsed under the care of a different nurse.
---
QUOTES:
LL's text -
"Feel like I need to be in 1 to overcome it, but
[nurse] said no x" “Well that’s how I feel. […]
I voiced that so can’t do any more, but
people should respect that.” Why don’t you go in 1 for a bit?” LL: "
Yeah, I have done a couple of meds in 1."
---
"LL was on duty that night, looking after [a baby referred to as JE] in room 3.The nurse said she had 'concerns over respiratory distress' for that baby at the start of that night shift. He was 'grunting', and such symptoms had not been present prior to that. The nurse asked LL to increase the observations for that baby from two-hourly to one-hourly and call the registrar in. The nurse explains she asked LL to focus back on [JE] in nursery room 3, but LL went into the family room "a few times"."
--
"The nurse recalled asking LL to leave the family [of baby C] to Melanie Taylor. The nurse tells the court LL did not have any designated duties to be in the family room, and told her "more than once" not to be in the family room."
--
LL's nursing note for baby A: "a lock of hair and hand/footprints taken for Child A
in accordance with the parents' wishes."
A nurse's note on June 9 records that the family of Child A ...
declined to receive a memory box for Child A and photographs
LL's texts 10 June:
The colleague told LL that the parents of baby A had taken a memory box for him. LL: 'Oh good'. 'Hoped they would find comfort'.
LL's nursing note for baby E: "
Consent obtained for [hair] and hand/footprints"
Mother of E's testimony - "after he died "Lucy Letby gave us a memory box,
which totally surprised me.. it had footprints, a lock of his hair, a candle, a teddy."
--
Baby C's mother, a GP, testified "I didn't really take in what was happening, and didn't take in the severity of the situation, until a nurse came up and asked whether I wanted someone to call a priest. 'I remember feeling quite shocked and
I asked if she thought he was going to die. She responded: "Yes, I think so". 'I was surprised that this piece of information came from a nurse rather than a doctor.' She described the nurse as being in her mid to late 20s with a fair complexion and her hair in a ponytail.
Premature baby survived 'injection of air', Lucy Letby trial hears
--
Baby C's father "A nurse he thought may have been Letby came in with a ventilated basket. She allegedly told the couple: 'You've said your goodbyes. Do you want me to put him in here?' 'This comment shocked us,' admitted the father. 'My wife said: 'He's not dead yet'.
--
baby E - The twins' mum testifies "It was a sound that shouldn’t have come from a tiny baby. I can’t explain what it was - it was horrendous. It was more of a scream than a cry". [She] says that her son had blood around his mouth. She says that Lucy Letby was the only person in the room with the babies
but was not by the incubator - she was standing at the workstation. Baby E's mum says she asked Lucy Letby what was wrong with her son. Nurse Letby
told her that the feed tube from the back of his tube had been rubbing and had caused the blood. Pros: Did Lucy Letby say anything else to you? Mum:
She told me to go back to the ward.
--
Upon the designated nurse's return to room 2, Letby was
"standing in the doorway of the room" and Letby said Child I "looked pale". The designated nurse switched on the light and saw Child I was "at the point of death". She later recalled the child was breathing about 'once every 20 seconds'. LL made a note at the end of her shift at 8.10am: '
[Child I] noted to be pale in cot by myself at 03:20hrs … apnoea alarm in situ and had not sounded. On examination [Child I] centrally white, minimal shallow breaths followed by gasping observed.'
--
"Dr Jayaram decided to check on where Lucy Letby was and where Child K was." "As he walked in, he could see Letby standing over Child K's incubator.
He could see Child K's oxygen levels were falling. However, the alarm was not sounding and
Lucy Letby was making no effort to help. "Dr Jayaram went straight to treat Child K and found her chest was not moving, he asked Letby if anything had happened to which she replied, “she’s just started deteriorating now”. Dr Jayaram found Child K's breathing tube had been dislodged. Child K was very premature, and had been sedated and inactive. The tube had been secured by tape and attached to Child K's headgear."
--
"CPR was started, but Child E "continued to bleed". Although Letby was participating in the resuscitation of Child E, she co-signed for medication given to another baby in room 4."
--
"Letby is then the designated nurse for Child F on the night shift of August 1, August 2 and August 3, 2015.
Dr Gail Beech's evidence - Child F weighed
1.296kg [2lb 13oz], from a birth weight of 1.434kg [3lb 2oz].
LL's text:
"Something isn’t right if he’s dropping like that with the amount of fluid he’s had and
being 1.65kg" [3lb 10oz]
--
"The Band 5 nurse said she gave Baby G a feed of expressed milk from her mother before
leaving for a break at 2am on September 7, 2015."
"Shift leader Ailsa Simpson said she was with Letby at the nursing station – directly opposite the high dependency unit – when she heard
a projectile vomit at 2.15am."
LL's nursing note written in retrospect at 8.57am [
after nursing handover]: The note says "written in retrospect for
care given from 2am to present. [Child G] had large projectile milky vomit at 2.15am. Continued to vomit++. 45mls of milk obtained from NG tube with air++.
a statement from a nurse who took over Child G’s care at the end of Letby’s night shift. “Lucy told me
(Child G) had vomited while under the care of (another nurse) and then became unwell.
--
LL was asked by police about a handover sheet relating to Child B found at her home address in a search. The sheet showed she had been the designated nurse for two babies in a different room that night.
when Letby's home was searched in 2018, a handwriten log of drugs administered during Child M's collapse was found
In Letby's home search, officers recovered the handover sheet from the morning of June 25 which included Child Q's name. This was a document which should not have left the hospital.
--
In June 2019, she was asked about a sympathy card she had sent to [child I's] parents. She said it was not normal to do so - and this was the only time she had done so. She accepted having an image of that card on her phone.
--
Then there are the strange incidents which seem to implicate LL but might be incorrect - a mother who thought LL was not giving them privacy and had her husband ask her to go away, a doctor performing resuscitation on a baby being handed a phone which was connected to a parent instead of a consultant, a drugs chart which went missing during resuscitation and then turned up later and LL seeming to be acutely conscious of the situation (imo) and asking how the nurse had calculated the drugs. Obsessively (imo) looking up the parents on Facebook, including parents of deceased babies she hadn't ever cared for, months after they had died.
I'm keeping notes and I'll be adding to them as the trial goes on. Quotes taken from the media thread. There are more examples of allegedly "fraudulent" nursing notes, and parents who noted unusual behaviour and nursing notes which didn't reflect what the parent said happened, which I will add when we hear the evidence.
