Iran Press/ Europe: Lucy Letby's case has horrified the country and raised questions over the management culture that had allowed her to evade detection for so long. She is convicted of killing seven newborns and trying to kill six others.
The murders and attempted killings took place between June 2015 and June 2016, when Letby was a nurse in the neonatal ward of the Countess of Chester Hospital in northwestern England, tasked with caring for premature and vulnerable babies. She refused to appear during her sentencing on Monday, but the court heard heart-wrenching testimony from the parents of babies who were killed.
The mother of a baby boy killed by Letby addressed the absent former nurse in court on Monday, saying, “There is no sentence that will ever compare to the excruciating agony that we have suffered as a consequence of your actions.”
A father of triplets, two of whom Letby was convicted of killing, said in a prerecorded video statement that “everyday life was difficult, just getting up and living was a struggle,” after the death of his children.
Over the course of the 10-month trial in Manchester Crown Court, which began in October, jurors heard that Letby had harmed babies by overfeeding them with milk, injecting them with air and insulin, and inflicting “impact-type” trauma.
The UK government has ordered an independent inquiry into how Letby managed to remain undetected for years after the British news media reported that hospital managers had ignored repeated warnings about her conduct.
211
