Doctor tells jury he saw Lucy Letby watching as baby’s oxygen levels fell
A senior doctor has told a jury he walked in on Lucy Letby watching a newborn girl suffer a “life-threatening” collapse while apparently doing nothing to help her.
Letby, 34, is accused of attempting to murder the two-hour-old baby by dislodging her breathing tube shortly after the infant’s designated nurse left her side.
The trial at Manchester crown court has been told that a senior doctor walked in on the then nurse on the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Giving evidence on Wednesday, Dr Ravi Jayaram told jurors he had felt “very uncomfortable” leaving Letby alone with the newborn – known as Baby K – after he and colleagues had linked her to a number of “unusual incidents”.
The jury has been told that Letby was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another six during a trial last year.
Jurors in the original trial were unable to reach a verdict on the count of attempted murder relating to Baby K, who was born 15 weeks premature on 17 February 2016. Letby has pleaded not guilty.
Jayaram, a paediatric consultant, told the court he was arranging Baby K’s transfer to Arrowe Park hospital when the infant’s designated nurse, Joanna Williams, told him she had left Letby “babysitting” while she went to speak with the child’s parents on another ward.
He told the court that at this time “we had had a number of unusual incidents with babies and a number of colleagues, and myself, had noticed an association of Lucy Letby being present at these events”.
He added: “At this stage, we had had a thematic review, which hadn’t found any other obvious factors. I was … I’ll be honest, I felt very uncomfortable. Objectively you can say that was very irrational but I just had a feeling knowing what had happened before.
“My internal dialogue was very much: ‘Stop being stupid, get on with your work.’ I needed to go in just to reassure myself that everything was OK and then I could just get on with doing things.”
Jayaram said he walked into the nursery between two and a half and three minutes after Williams left Letby with Baby K. He told jurors he saw Letby stood next to the newborn’s incubator apparently not doing anything to help her as her oxygen saturation levels fell sharply.
Jayaram said Letby did not have her hands in the incubator and was not looking at her monitor. He told jurors: “I can’t remember my exact words, I just said: ‘What’s happening?’ Lucy Letby looked up and said: ‘Oh, she’s desaturated.’”
The paediatrician said the alarms attached to Baby K’s monitor should have sounded but they did not.
“What I saw when I looked at [Baby K] was, whereas previously her chest had been moving up and down, her chest was not moving well.”
Jayaram said he used a stethoscope to examine the baby girl and noticed “very poor” air entry and a “change in the sounds of her breath”. He said there “wasn’t any obvious evidence” that Letby was trying to help the infant or had carried out a routine examination to find out the cause of her collapse.
Jayaram said he established that there was an issue with Baby K’s breathing tube. When it was resolved, he told jurors, she “picked up extremely quickly”. “Within a few breaths her colour improved, her saturations improved and I could see that her chest was moving normally,” he said.
He told the court this was a “relief” as it suggested the issue had been resolved and had not marked a deterioration in her lung disease, for which she was treated immediately after birth.
Johnson asked Jayaram whether it was possible for newborn babies to dislodge their own breathing tube. He said it was possible but that he had never seen it in a baby of Baby K’s prematurity.
Asked by Johnson whether Baby K’s collapse had been “life-threatening”, Jayaram said: “It is if it’s not dealt with quickly.”
Letby denies tampering with the newborn’s breathing tube. Her barrister, Benjamin Myers KC, has told jurors the case relies on whether they believe Jayaram’s evidence is “truthful or accurate”.
The trial continues.