By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-09-25 12:55:13 | Updated at 2024-09-30 15:27:32
5 days ago
The father of two triplet babies murdered by Lucy Letby has described frantic scenes as the children collapsed, with medical staff appearing to search online for tutorials to guide them through “everyday” medical procedures.
Letby injected air into the bloodstream of Child O and also into his stomach through a nasogastric tube, as well as administering air into the stomach of his brother, Child P.
The deaths in June 2016 were previously said to be the “tipping point” for consultants who suspected Letby was to blame and demanded she be removed from the unit at the Countess of Chester hospital.
Letby, 34, was sentenced to 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted across two trials of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
A public inquiry, led by Lady Justice Thirlwall at Liverpool town hall, is examining events at the hospital’s neonatal unit, where Letby was a nurse from 2015 to 2016. She was first arrested in 2018 and convicted in 2023 and 2024.
In a statement read to the inquiry, the father of babies O, P and R described the frantic moments when he realised Child P was collapsing, less than 24 hours after he lost Child O in similar circumstances.
“We rushed back to the unit, and it was like deja vu,” he said. “It was almost an exact repeat of the day before. Everyone was running around like headless chickens, looking like they had no idea what was wrong. I asked one of the doctors what was going on, and said, ‘It’s happening again, isn’t it?’ Nothing was said to me. No one could explain it again.”
The father, who cannot be named, went on: “There was another doctor at what looked like a makeshift desk using a screen to look up how to perform the chest drain and where the incisions and tubes should go. It looked as though they were following a tutorial and not as if they really knew what they were doing.”
Letby was involved in the attempts to resuscitate Child P, he recalled, and he then saw another nurse “Googling a procedure”.
“She was youngish. She had a PC screen in front of her, and as soon as I saw this come up on the screen, I panicked. I was confused as to why she was Googling this.
“The procedure was a lung drain. On the screen, there was an image of a person with an arrow pointing to where the incision should be. It was a medical diagram. I think the staff heard me talking about it.
“I was angry at this point. I can remember other staff coming over to the computer to look at it. They all had a word with each other and did the procedure. This was worrying me, because it was, it is an everyday procedure, one that hospital staff must do day in, day out.”
The father had some recollections of dealing with Letby, recalling when he was told she had been arrested.
“It was so difficult to understand at first, because she had been so visibly upset when Child P passed away. When she was working on the shift, she came across as quite robotic and cold, but after Child P died, she appeared to be devastated.”
He told the inquiry he did not believe the Countess of Chester hospital displayed a duty of candour towards him and his wife, the mother of the children.
He said: “I believe that Countess of Chester hospital knew much more than they have admitted to publicly about Letby’s crimes, and I understand from my solicitors, but by the time the children were born there, there were already serious concerns about Letby.”
The inquiry continues.
