Lucy Letby trial: Doctor's claim he caught nurse mid-attack 'wrong'

A senior doctor's claim that he "caught" nurse Lucy Letby sabotaging a baby girl is "wrong" and "not worthy of belief", a jury has been told.

Ms Letby denies murdering seven infants and attempting to murder 10 others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.

She is accused of deliberately dislodging a baby's breathing tube shortly before a consultant walked in the nursery room.

The 33-year-old denies all charges.

The court heard the alleged attempted murder of Child K is said to have taken place during a night shift at the Countess of Chester Hospital's neonatal unit in February 2016.

Ms Letby's defence barrister Ben Myers KC told the jury that Dr Ravi Jayaram's evidence about the alleged attack was "unbelievable".

Dr Jayaram has previously told the trial that he "felt extremely uncomfortable" at the thought of Ms Letby being alone with Child K in February 2016.

He said: "At this point, in mid-February, we were aware as a team of a number of unexpected and unusual events and we were aware of an association with Lucy Letby."

Dr Jayaram told the jury that he went to check on Child K, in the early hours of 17 February 2016, and when he arrived in the nursery he saw Ms Letby "standing by the incubator and the ventilator".

He said he noticed that the infant's blood oxygen levels were in the 80s and dropping and that Ms Letby was "doing nothing" to respond.

Mr Myers said "the implication" of Dr Jayaram's evidence was that he had "caught" her mid-attack, something Ms Letby does "not accept".

"She does not and has never accepted doing something to harm these children," he added.

Mr Myers said Dr Jayaram "did his best to support the allegation he made by saying [Child K] was sedated" at the time of the incident.

He added: "When we get into this case, we discover she was not sedated at time of the tube movement, that was the primary basis for blaming Ms Letby for the dislodgement.

"When the case was opened it was based on [Child K] not being mobile because she was sedated and therefore couldn't be responsible for moving the tube."

The jury was shown clinical notes, which Mr Myers pointed out showed Child K was given morphine after her collapse, and not before.

He asked the jury to consider if the consultant had really seen "what he says he saw do you think he would have taken his eyes off Ms Letby for one moment from that point on, seriously?"

"We say the most striking feature is how he did nothing, despite what he claimed to the police over a year later," he added.

Mr Myers noted that Dr Jayaram never raised a formal internal complaint, via the Datix reporting system, about the alleged incident.

"If things happened the way he tells us there's absolutely no way he would allow this to happen twice more, in front of him, it's unbelievable," he said.

"He would be watching her like a hawk".

Earlier the defence lawyer reminded the jury of the case of Child J, who was born prematurely at the Chester hospital in late October 2015 and transferred to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool on 1 November as she had a bowel condition which required surgery.

She returned to Chester on 10 November, where she remained stable until 27 November when she suffered two unexplained seizures within a half-hour period.

Mr Myers said in this case the doctors and experts agreed that the infant's collapse was "unexplained" and said there was "no evidence" to link what happened to Ms Lebty.

He said this did not amount to attempted murder and the prosecution case was "empty".

He also quoted Child J's mother, who had compared conditions at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Alder Hey.

At the Countess of Chester the mother "felt like staff on occasions did not take her or her husband's concerns seriously when they raised them", he said, adding that in the parents' view staff in Chester "did not have the same competence and ability" as those at Alder Hey.

The trial continues.

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