Aug. 19 (UPI) — A British court on Friday found nurse Lucy Letby guilty of murder for killing seven babies in her neonatal unit and attempting to kill six more.
Letby, 33, was found guilty of seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder, however, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on six additional counts of attempted murder.
Juries delivered guilty verdicts in the course of several hearings after a two-year investigation by Cheshire Police.
“The details of this case are truly crushing,” Cheshire Police Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Evans said in a statement. “A trained nurse responsible for caring and protecting tiny, premature babies; a person who was in a position of trust, she abused that trust in the most unthinkable way. Today is not a time for celebration. There are no winners in this case.”
She will face sentencing on Monday where she is expected to receive a whole-life sentence, meaning she will not be released from prison. She would be only the third woman alive in Britain to receive such a sentence.
Letby’s victims included two identical triplet brothers, a newborn weighing less than 2 pounds who was given a fatal air injection and a 10 weeks premature girl who was murdered on the fourth attempt.
Police said she injected babies with air and poisoned two with insulin.
Families of the victims gasped and wept in court as jury verdicts were read over several days. A statement from the families read out in court by a police family liaison officer said justice had been served but it couldn’t take away the extreme hurt, anger and distress they all had to go through.
Evans said police focus right now is on the families of the babies. She said she “cannot begin to imagine how the families in this case feel today.”
The prosecution said Letby is a calculated and devious opportunist while her defense lawyers argued “serial failures in care” were responsible for the infant deaths in her unit.
Cheshire Police said they were contacted by The Countess of Chester Hospital Foundation Trust in May 2017 about a greater number of infant deaths than normal and an investigation was launched.
Police at first focused on eight baby deaths between June 2015 and June 2016. They also looked into six non-fatal infant collapses.
Letby was arrested in July 2018 at her home in Chester.
Police said it was a highly complex and extremely sensitive investigation conducted over six years that produced 32,000 pages of evidence. They said they were careful not rush in order to to get it right.
