Lucy Letby’s haunting final words to mother of premature baby victim

The mother knew something wasn't right when she heard these words come out of the nurse’s mouth.

Lucy Letby told the mum of a premature boy that she though he was going to die - after she had injected him with air to murder him, it has been revealed.

The woman had been woken in the middle of the night by nurses after her son, known as Baby C, collapsed.

The mother was taken to the neonatal unit where nurses were trying to revive her son.

One nurse asked the mother: “Would you like me to call a priest?”

“Even though I was faced with a situation where my son was having CPR, I was still quite confused and disorientated as to what was going on, and until I was asked that question, it really didn’t hit me that there was a chance he was going to die,’ she told the public inquiry into Letby’s crimes at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

The mother said: “I asked her. I said, you know, ‘Do you think he’s going to die?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I think so.’ And at the time - you know, as I say, I didn’t know this nurse’s name, I hadn’t seen her before, but I believe this was Lucy Letby.”

CCTV in a hospital nursery would have stopped Lucy Letby from killing a baby girl, her mother has told the public inquiry. Picture: AP

Her son was the second baby murdered by Letby in the space of a week in June 2015.

The boy was 10 weeks premature, and although he was small, the inquiry was told he wasn't expected to die, and doctors were confused by his sudden collapse.

Letby killed him when he was four days old by injecting air into his stomach via his feeding tube, compromising his breathing.

CCTV could have prevented death

CCTV in a hospital nursery would have stopped Letby fromkilling a baby girl, her mother has told the public inquiry.

The serial killer nurse injected air into Child D’s bloodstream in 2015.

The baby’s mum said if she had known what was going on in the room her tot would not have died.

Hospitals were asked in the Thirlwall Inquiry if they have considered installing CCTV following Letby murdering seven babies and attempted to kill seven others.

Child D’s mother said: “If there was CCTV or we were kept aware of what was going on, she wouldn’t have died.

“I would have been there it so it wouldn’t have happened.”

“She was doing well. I was promised it would be OK to go to sleep that night and I would wake up and I would be able to feed her and hold her.

“And we got woken up in the morning to be told ‘no, this is not happening’.

Everything just crumbled. It was just a whirlwind of emotion and disaster, and I had lots of questions straightaway.

“You are going home without your baby but you know things aren’t right. Nothing made sense.”

Body worn camera footage from Cheshire Constabulary of the arrest in 2018.

In 2023, the British nurse has been found guilty of murdering seven newborn babies and trying to murder six others at the hospital neonatal unit where she worked.

Letby, known as the “angel of death” has become the UK’s most prolific killer of children.

She attacked some of the babies in a hospital in Cheshire, in England’s north west, just as their overjoyed parents had left the ward.

The court heard that Letby smiled at the mum of a baby she murdered on the fourth attempt and sent a sympathy card.

In a search of her home, police found a note saying: “I am evil, I did this”.

The 33-year-old injected her young victims, who were either sick or born prematurely, with air, overfeeding them milk and poisoning them with insulin.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court reached all of its verdicts on Friday, UK time, after deliberating for 22 days. Letby was found not guilty of two counts of attempted murder. While the jury could not decide on the attempted murder of a further four children.

Letby was arrested following a string of baby deaths at the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital, in Chester near the Welsh border, between June 2015 and June 2016.

Originally published as Lucy Letby’s haunting final words to mother of premature baby victim