Letby’s colleague: baby girl was stable when I went for lunch and in urgent care when I returned
Lucy Letby’s colleague tells court baby girl was stable when she went for lunch but was projectile vomiting and receiving urgent care when she returned
- Neonatal nurse is accused of murdering seven babies and trying to kill ten more
- An ex-colleague, who cannot be named, was out of the room from 2am to 3am
- Upon her return from break, Baby G had been taken to intensive care
Lucy Letby, 32, is charged with seven counts of murder and the attempted murders of ten more
A colleague of Lucy Letby said she returned from a lunch break to see that a previously healthy baby was projectile vomiting and receiving urgent care.
The Band 5 nurse, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she gave Baby G a feed of expressed milk from her mother before leaving for a break at 2am on September 7, 2015.
When she returned an hour later, the baby was receiving urgent care.
Baby G had projectile vomited with such force that the liquid left the cot and splashed a nearby chair and canopy.
Letby’s colleague told the jury at Manchester Crown Court: ‘I came back from my break and the lights were on in Nursery 1, which is straight ahead from where we came out.
‘I went past that room to Nursery 2 but G wasn’t there. So I sent to where the other staff were in Nursery 1 and discovered she was in there.
‘I can’t remember what they were doing at the time, but there were staff there and they told me she’d been unwell while I was on my break’.
Asked by Philip Astbury, prosecuting, whether the incident had been unexpected, she replied: ‘Yes, because she’d been in a cot in Nursery 2, fed and settled when I left her. I had no more concern than normal for a baby on low oxygen’.
Another neonatal nurse, Ailsa Simpson, recalled the baby being ‘in good condition’ that night.
She had been sitting with Lucy Letby at the nurses’ station when, 15 minutes’ into her colleague’s break, they both heard the projectile vomit.
Letby was responsible for Baby G’s care while her colleague went on an hour-long lunch break
The two nurses then ran in to help the infant. As they reached her, the monitor at the cot set off an alarm to indicate that her heart rate and saturation levels had dropped.
She could not recall what each of them did, but between them they sat the baby up and gave her respiratory support via the Neopuff.
‘Whether it was me or Lucy doing the Neopuff I can’t remember. At the time we were giving her breaths and we would have called for help straight away. It was either me or my colleague who would have shouted’.
Lisa Walker, a nurse, was the first to respond, and a short time later Dr Alison Ventress arrived to help with the emergency.
Re-examined by Mr Astbury, she recalled telling police in an audio interview that upon hearing the vomit she had immediately stood up. She added at the time: ‘I ran in and Lucy Letby ran in with me’.
Jurors have been shown the neonatal nursery where Letby allegedly murdered babies
Ben Myers, KC, defending, asked the nurse about the decision to transfer the care of Baby G to Lucy Letby in the aftermath of the vomit.
She agreed she was not intensive care trained at the time, whereas Letby was. It therefore made sense for the night shift leader to assign her to the baby’s care.
Letby, 32, originally from Hereford, denies murdering seven babies and attempting to murder a further ten.
The trial resumes on Monday.