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The mother of a baby murdered by Lucy Letby has told how the killer did nothing but stand and watch as her child was dying, an inquiry has heard.
The child serial killer attacked Child D three times by injected air into her bloodstream at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the early hours of 22 June 2015.
Speaking at the Thirlwall Inquiry on Tuesday, the baby’s mother recalled the moment she watched doctors try to save her dying baby, with the killer nurse also stood in the same room.
She said: “Someone came to the room, a nurse, and she said, ‘You need to come now. Your daughter’s very poorly’...I couldn’t see my daughter. I could see [the doctor] holding her and trying to save her.
“There was a lot of people, one that was doing nothing useful, that was Lucy Letby, and she was just looking at us crumbling and crying.”
The mother also shared how she had been told the night before that her daughter was beginning to get better, with doctors adding she could feed her in the morning.
But giving evidence, the mother told the inquiry: “He [the doctor] came to us and he reassured us. he said, listen, everything’s fine, and she’s much better. She’s come off the light therapy. She’s speaking up. She seems to be more lively. She seemed to react as she should react…if all carries on, continue expressing milk, and if all carries on tomorrow morning, you can breastfeed her, and you can have a cuddle and that she’s on her way to recovery.”
She added: “We got woken up in the morning and things turned around because everything just crumbled. Nothing made sense, there is the grief but you’re having to completely turn things around so you’re having to go home without your baby…nothing made sense.”
Every hospital in England with a neonatal unit is being asked whether they have considered installing CCTV as part of the inquiry - and the mother said she believed surveillance cameras would have prevented Letby murdering her child.
She also accused the hospital of trying to cover up her concerns over her baby’s death.
Despite a Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health report linking Letby’s presence to when her child died, the mother was not informed and the family was given a copy of the report with no references to this finding.
Bosses at the hospital admitted communication with parents could have been better at an earlier hearing of the inquiry. They also apologised for a “significant delay” in alerting police, stating they felt they needed to investigate the matter to gain potential evidence of wrongdoing before contacting Cheshire Police.
Mother D told the inquiry: “It’s clear that the trust was not being open and honest with us. It seemed to me, that they were trying to cover something up.”
She later added: “I first mentioned involving the police, everyone told me. There’s nothing to do. It’s not criminal. There’s nothing more to it. It’s sad, but your baby passed because she was poorly. But if I knew there was, if I knew everything there was to it, I would have gone myself.”
Mother D’s evidence comes following evidence Monday by the mother of Child C who described being “kept in the dark” by medical director Ian Harvey over the circumstances of her son’s death.
Letby forced air down a feeding tube and into the stomach of Child C who died in June 2015, days after another fatal attack.
Giving evidence on Monday, Child C’s mother said: “We absolutely had no idea that there had been layer upon layer upon layer of concern voiced by various people within the hospital about the conduct of Lucy Letby and her association with these deaths. And to not inform us of any of this and for us to get a phone call out of the blue from a police officer in the early hours of the morning… it was an absolute shock that day. We had not anticipated that that was going to happen.”
The Thirlwall Inquiry has heard that when medical director Ian Harvey met Child C’s mother in February 2017 he was aware at the time that serious concerns had been expressed by consultants over Letby and a repor that criticised the quality of the care to the child, concluding that his death may have been preventable.
Mother C told the inquiry: “To find out now that all the time Ian Harvey met with us in February 2017 he was well aware of both the concerns about Letby and the report of our son’s death did contain criticism is an absolute disgrace.”
She said she wanted a face-to-face apology from Mr Harvey, who is retired and now lives in France.
The inquiry continues on Wednesday.
