MIS À DAY
A British nurse on trial for the murder of seven babies in 2015 and 2016 again denied on Friday killing or harming children, and denied on the last day of questioning that she was “a calculator”.
Lucy Letby, whose trial started in October in Manchester (north-west England), is accused of having killed these babies while she was a nurse in the neonatology unit of the Countess of Chester. According to the prosecution, she killed them by injecting air into their veins or injecting insulin.
The exchange Friday with prosecutor Nick Johnson was particularly tense.
“You're a very calculating woman, aren't you?” he asked 33-year-old Lucy Letby. “You are lying on purpose, aren't you?” he continued. “You lie to try to get people's sympathy and attention, don't you?”. To these questions, the accused replied with a simple “no”.
“By killing these children, you drew attention, didn't you?”, questioned the prosecutor again. “I didn't kill the children,” replied Lucy Letby. “I never killed a child or harmed any of them,” she later repeated.
At the start of her interrogation in May, she explained that 'she found it “sickening” in 2016 to be under suspicion. “I didn't believe it,” she explained, “I don't think you could be accused of anything worse than that.”
Lucy Letby explained to the court that she had “always wanted to work with children. She was the first in her family to go to college.
She kept defending herself for harming infants.
On Friday, the prosecutor returned to a note she had written in 2016, when she was informed of the suspicions against her. “I don't deserve to live. I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to take care of them. I am a horrible bad person,” she wrote.
“You knew you killed or seriously injured those children. (…) Are you a murderer?”, said the prosecutor. “No,” replied the accused once again.