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The home of defendant Lucy Letby, 2019
Photo: Peter Byrne/PA Wire/DPA
Her presence in the neonatal intensive care unit was a "constant source of evil," said prosecutor Nick Johnson on Monday at the start of the trial in Manchester about the accused nurse Lucy L. The Guardian reports.
The nurse is accused of heinous acts: The 32-year-old L. is said to have murdered seven newborns between 2015 and 2016.
She is also said to have tried to kill ten other babies.
L. is said to have intentionally injected two of the children who survived with insulin in order to kill them.
At the time, the two children had only been in the world for two days.
Whenever she was on duty, Johnson said, the children's condition deteriorated - sometimes to the point of death.
In other cases, the children's condition would have improved rapidly in some inexplicable way.
The hospital's neonatal intensive care unit in the city of Chester treated premature or sick children.
The prosecutor said it was not unusual for children to die there.
But the number of babies who died or whose health suddenly deteriorated drastically increased when L. allegedly started killing the babies in June 2015.
Police began investigating after doctors noticed that Lucy L. had been treating the babies in all of the incidents.
She was arrested in 2018.
"There was a poisoner at work here," Johnson said.
L. says she is innocent.
The trial has been scheduled for a negotiation period of six months.
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