Doctor regrets not calling police about Lucy Letby, court heard

A maternity consultant today said he has “tremendous regret” for not calling the police when he allegedly saw Lucy Letby dislodge a breathing tube from a baby.

In August 2023, Letby, 34, from Hereford, was convicted of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six other infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital between June 2015 and June 2016. The trial jury of 10 Letby’s trial at Manchester Crown Court on Monday failed to reach verdicts on six counts of attempted murder in relation to five children.

She is being retried on one of those charges, alleging she tried to kill a little girl, known as Child K, in February 2016. Letby’s trial resumed at Manchester Crown Court today, the Manchester Evening News reports.

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This afternoon, jurors in the former nurse’s trial were shown an ITV interview with Dr Ravi Jayaram, who had been brought in to oversee the child’s care. In the interview, he told Paul Brand that the “only possibility” for the infant’s sudden collapse was the deliberate dislodgement of a breathing tube. He said: “This is a night that is etched in my memory and will remain in my nightmares forever.”

Earlier, the pediatrician told the jury he felt “very uncomfortable” following a series of baby collapses associated with the nurse, prompting him to check on her when the infant’s “designated nurse” went to inform the parents. He found the baby deteriorating rapidly, with Letby “doing nothing,” according to the indictment. The extremely premature baby died three days later.

As the trial resumed today, Ben Myers KC, defending, asked Dr Jayaram if he was telling the truth when he said in the ITV interview that the “only possibility” was that the breathing tube had been deliberately dislodged.

The doctor answered “yes” and continued, “I went in and the things that should have happened didn’t happen.”

KC suggested to the witness that he believed he had caught the nurse “in the act” and Dr Jayaram said people might wonder why he didn’t go to the police straight away.

Pressed by Mr Myers on why he did not take his suspicions to the police, the doctor said concerns had been raised within the NHS but claimed there was a “really strategy to keep us quiet”. He added: “People didn’t really want to listen to us to acknowledge the problems.”

Dr Jayaram said that if he had called the police, the police would have called the trust’s chief executive, who would have suggested they were “just a bunch of consultants complaining”. He said, “That’s why I didn’t pick up the phone.”

The doctor went on to say that he would have “intensified” his concerns “if I had known then what I know now”. He said the concerns that were raised at the time were “running into brick walls”. Dr Jayaram said he would have called the police “if I had had more courage”.

Asked what prevented him from picking up the phone, the witness said “adherence to processes and systems” and that consultants had “added” the incident to their list of concerns and “put their trust” in leaders at executive director level.

The doctor admitted it was “a matter of enormous regret” that he did not call the police at the time.

Dr Jayaram said: “We are already raising these concerns. We ask our leaders to advise us on how to do the right thing. It’s not just about picking up the phone and dialing 999, although Mr Myers might think otherwise.”

The witness agreed that he would call 999 if someone harmed a member of his family.

KC suggested to Dr Jayaram that it was his maternity unit, that the witness had previously said that patient care was paramount and that the reason he did not call the police was because “you didn’t see anything worthy of calling the police”.

The doctor replied, “I don’t agree.”

“That’s the truth, isn’t it?” KC asked and the doctor again disagreed and said the incident happened “in front of me”. He continued that there was “an element of fear of retaliation from people above me”.

He said he was advised “from the start” that going to the police would be “wrong”.

“You didn’t call the police because it didn’t happen,” the lawyer said, and Dr Jayaram replied: “I would have to respectfully disagree.”

KC said he raised the matter with the police only 14 months later and the doctor said that was when the police investigation began. Asked why he was prepared to allow a nurse to “keep killing”, Dr Jayaram said he was in “uncharted territory” and was “meeting resistance from people at the top”.

Lawyer tells witness he didn’t go to drive to say he caught Lucy Letby ‘in the act’

The doctor previously denied “deliberately exaggerated details” of his claim that it took up to two minutes from the time the endotracheal tube was moved to the damage he witnessed. “That’s your opinion. I don’t agree with that,” the witness said.

Letby is alleged to have tried to kill the baby, referred to in media reports of the procedure as ‘Baby K’, at the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital in February 2016 within two hours of her birth. Jurors at Manchester Crown Court were previously told that following a lengthy trial which ended last year, the defendant was convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder a further six.

By the time she allegedly targeted Child K, the then-nurse had already killed five children and attempted to kill three others on various dates between June 2015 and October 2015, the court heard. She was also convicted last year of the attempted murder of the twins in April 2016; an attempt to kill another boy in June 2016; and the murders of two triplet boys later that month.

The defense claims Dr Jayaram did not consider the incident suspicious at the time and “added details” to make it appear more suspicious.

Dr Jayaram told the jury he said he was sitting at a desk in the care ward when Child K’s designated nurse, Joanne Williams, told him she would give an update to the parents and she informed him that Letby was “waiting” for Child K in his absence They.

“At this point we had a number of unusual incidents and a number of colleagues and I associated with Lucy Letby present at these things,” said Dr Jayaram. The doctor said that until then there had been “a topical review and an external review” which found “no obvious factor”.

Dr. Jayaram said: “I was sitting… I’ll be very honest, I felt very uncomfortable. Objectively, you can say it’s completely irrational. I just had a feeling because nothing happened before. My internal dialogue was very much to stop being stupid. and continue with your work. I had to go make sure everything was okay and then I knew I could do things.”

He said he entered Kindergarten One approximately two and a half to three minutes after Nurse Williams left.

Asked by prosecutor Nick Johnson KC what he saw, the doctor said he went to the incubator and looked at the monitors. “We could see (Baby K’s) oxygen saturation was dropping into the 80s and dropping.”

Dr. Jayaram said Letby was sitting next to the incubator, not looking at him, and did not have his hands in the incubator. He said he did not remember whether the nurse was facing him directly or at an angle, but told jurors she was not looking at the monitors.

The doctor said he approached and could not remember the exact words he used, but said he asked Letby “what happened?”. The defendant looked up and told him “it looks like he’s desaturating,” the doctor told the jury.

The witness said no alarms were sounding on the ventilator, although he said he did not look to see if the alarms were suspended. “If the alarm had gone off, that would have been my cue to go in. The alarms are loud and where I was sitting, if the alarm had gone off I would have heard it,” Dr Jayaram told jurors.

The doctor said he looked at Child K and saw that her chest was “not moving well”, and when he examined her with a stethoscope, he found that her breathing was “very weak”. He said he disconnected the ventilator and concluded there was “a problem with the tube” going into the child’s mouth and removed it. He put a breathing mask over her mouth and the baby “took off extremely quickly” and her blood oxygen levels improved, he told the court.

“I saw that her chest was moving normally. That is, one, a relief, and two, it did not suggest that there was significant deterioration of the lung disease, because she took over extremely quickly with hand ventilation,” said Dr. Jayaram. . The doctor estimated that the event must have started between 30 seconds and two minutes before entering the nursery.

Pressed by KC about what Letby told him on arrival, the doctor said: “I don’t remember the exact words. It was to the effect that she was desaturated. There is nothing concrete that I can remember.” The doctor told the jury he thought there was a “problem with the tube” and did not think the tube was blocked because he did not find any “massive mucus plug”.

The doctor agreed it was possible for a baby to move the tube on its own, but he told the jury: “I’ve never seen it in babies of this gestation.” He said the tubes were secured in a “pretty robust way” with clamps and tape and would be “difficult to move”. He said: “It would take quite a bit of movement for a child to dislocate it.”

Asked if Letby asked for help, he replied: “No, not at all.” He added: “I was surprised the alarm wasn’t going off, although my priority was (baby K) and I didn’t question it at the time.” He said “in hindsight” he was surprised he wasn’t called, given the baby was 25 weeks pregnant and her blood oxygen levels were dropping.

Letby denies a charge of attempted murder. A court order prohibits reporting the identities of the surviving children and the dead children in the case.

The process continues.

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