Doctor who raised Lucy Letby concern says babies 'could now be going to school'
A doctor who first raised concerns about Lucy Letby years before her arrest said several babies would “now be going to school” if the hospital had acted faster.
Today Letby was convicted of murdering seven helpless babies in her care, and trying to kill six more. She was also found not guilty on two further attempted murder charges. Her year-long murder spree started in June 2015 and she struck mostly on night shifts when she was alone on the ward over sleeping babies. She faced a total of 22 charges, accused of murdering seven babies and trying to kill ten more at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Dr Ravi Jayaram says children would still be alive (Chester Chronicle)Ravi Jayaram, consultant paediatrician at the hospital, first expressed concerns to management in June 2015 when more sudden and unexpected collapses followed. Police were contacted in 2017. He told ITV News: “It's a horrible thing to say but I do genuinely believe there are four or five babies who could be going to school now who aren't."
He later added in the interview: “As I walked towards the incubator, I could see on the monitors the oxygen saturations were dropping, and they'd dropped to a level that ordinarily the alarms would've been going off and the nurse would've called for help.
“Lucy Letby was standing by the top of the incubator. She didn't have her hands in the incubator. She was just standing there.”
Baby boy has spent his life in hospital as doctors are 'scared' to discharge him
During the trial he had told proceedings: "As clinicians, we put our faith in the system, in senior management to escalate concerns and investigate them. The initial response was 'it's unlikely that anything is going on. We'll see what happens'."
Letby’s victims included three sets of twins and two of three triplets. It was claimed she attacked some infants on multiple occasions. When investigators later looked at staff shift patterns, it became clear she was the only nurse working when all 17 children were harmed. Letby was said to have targeted her final three victims in June 2016 after returning to work from a holiday in Ibiza.
Earlier she had texted a friend saying: "Probably be back in with a bang lol”. Within 72 hours of that message, two babies were dead, a third survived. It was claimed by that point in time she had "got away with so much" she was "completely out of control”. She believed “she could pretty much do whatever she wanted”.
The jury heard she had tracked the parents of her victims on social media. And she was said to have kept souvenirs of her crimes, including children’s medical notes. Also found at her home after her arrest in 2018 was a post-it note filled with scrawled handwritten phrases including: “I am evil, I did this” and “I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough. I am a horrible evil person”.
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