Households of Lucy Letby’s victims vow to proceed the seek for solutions

Aug 19, 2023 at 10:38 AM
Households of Lucy Letby’s victims vow to proceed the seek for solutions

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he households of infants murdered by Lucy Letby have vowed to proceed their seek for solutions as strain mounted on the hospital the place she labored over what extra may have been completed to cease her killing spree.

The 33-year-old “rogue” nurse was convicted of the homicide of seven infants and the tried homicide of six extra throughout her shifts on the neonatal unit on the Countess of Chester Hospital over a yr in 2015 and 2016.

The households of her victims have mentioned they’ve been left “heartbroken, devastated, angry and feel numb” by her actions.

Following her conviction at Manchester Crown Court on Friday, two of the infants’ households mentioned via a lawyer that it’s “not the end of our search for answers”.

Yvonne Agnew, head of Slater and Gordon’s Cardiff scientific negligence division, mentioned: “While today marks the conclusion of this trial, it is not the end of our search for answers and our fight for justice for our clients.

“We are determined that lessons are learnt by the Countess of Chester Hospital, the NHS and the wider medical profession so that no babies or parents are put in harm’s way like this again.”

It comes as police mentioned they’re reviewing the care of 4,000 infants who have been admitted to the Countess of Chester – and in addition Liverpool Women’s Hospital when Letby had two work placements – going way back to 2012.

The Chester hospital has come below scrutiny over when it referred to as in police and whether or not extra may have been completed to cease Letby.

A non-statutory unbiased inquiry into its dealing with of the case has been introduced by the Department of Health and the well being ombudsman has additionally mentioned the NHS should enhance its working tradition when employees increase “warnings of real evil”.

There have been 13 deaths on the neonatal unit the place she labored over a one-year interval, the BBC reported, which is 5 instances the same old fee, and the nurse was on responsibility for all of them.

She may have been stopped as early as June 2015 when executives held a gathering the place it was agreed an exterior investigation into the deaths can be held however it by no means was, the broadcaster mentioned.

In October that yr, after seven infants had died, a hyperlink was made between all of the deadly collapses and Lucy Letby, whom prosecutors described as a “constant malevolent presence” within the care of the infants.

Despite this the hyperlink was believed to be co-incidental.

Dr Susan Gilby, who took over because the hospital’s medical director a month after Letby was arrested, instructed the BBC: “The paediatricians were discussing the terrible nights on call that they were having, one of them said ‘every time that this is happening to me, that I am being called in for these catastrophic events which were unexpected and unexplained, Lucy Letby is there, and then somebody else said ‘yes I found that’, and then someone else had the same response.”

Paediatrician Dr Stephen Brearey, who blew the whistle on Letby in 2015, instructed The Guardian the hospital had been “negligent” in its dealing with of the killings.

Consultants needed to go to the police however officers weren’t referred to as and, in September 2016, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health was referred to as to hold out a overview of the unit, the BBC mentioned.

It urged the belief to probe every loss of life individually however this didn’t occur, it has been reported.

The killer nurse launched a grievance process towards the paediatricians which discovered she had been “discriminated against and victimised”, they usually have been pressured to jot down her an apology letter.

She was later taken off the neonatal unit that month following the deaths of two triplet boys.

She was nonetheless working on the belief when she was arrested at her semi-detached house in Westbourne Road, Chester, at 6am on July 3 2018.

During searches of her tackle, plenty of hand-written notes have been found.

On one inexperienced Post-it word, she wrote “I don’t deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I’m not good enough to care for them”, “I am a horrible evil person” and in capital letters “I am evil I did this”.

Speaking to the BBC, Dr Gilby mentioned of that point: “The strong opinion was that there would be nothing found.

“There was a brief overlap of three or four days between myself and the outgoing medical director, and his parting words to me were ‘you need to refer the paediatricians to the General Medical Council’.”

Former Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust chief govt Tony Chambers, who was in cost on the time, mentioned he would co-operate “fully and openly” with the inquiry.

Dr Nigel Scawn, medical director on the Countess of Chester Hospital, mentioned in an announcement on Friday: “Since Lucy Letby worked at our hospital, we have made significant changes to our services and I want to provide reassurance to every patient that may access our services that they can have confidence in the care that they will receive.”

But he walked away with out answering as a journalist requested: “Why did hospital managers try to stop Lucy Letby from being investigated?”

Letby shall be sentenced on Monday.

She has already indicated via her attorneys that she doesn’t want to attend her sentencing or face the victims’ households as they offer heartbreaking affect statements concerning the impact her actions have had on them.

Letby was cleared of two counts of tried homicide and jurors didn’t attain verdicts on six counts of tried homicide.

Prosecutors have mentioned they might search a retrial on the counts which jurors have been unable to succeed in verdicts on and have 28 days to present discover of any intention to take action.