Three officials of the British hospital where nurse Lucy Letby worked, found guilty in 2023 of the murder of seven infants in 2023, were arrested for suspicion of homicide by serious negligence, police announced on Tuesday.
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Lucy Letby, 35, is serving a prison sentence with incompressible perpetuity for the murder of seven babies and the attempted murder of seven others in her intensive care unit at the Countess of Chester hospital (northwestern England), between 2015 and 2016.
“Three people who are part of the hospital management in 2015-2016 were arrested on Monday, June 30, suspected of homicide by serious negligence,” said Commissioner Paul Hughes, quoted in the Cheshire police statement, in northwestern England.
“All three were released on bond while awaiting the continuation of the investigation,” he said, without giving details on their identity or the place of their arrest.
These are the first arrests outside the nurse in this case which had aroused dread in the United Kingdom.
Lucy Letby was arrested and then charged in 2020 following a series of infants’ deaths in the hospital’s neonatal unit.
According to the accusation, she attacked her victims, vulnerable premature babies, often during the night guards, by injecting them with air, superviding them or poisoning them to insulin.
In October 2023, Cheshire police opened an investigation into manslaughter against the Countess of Chester hospital, shortly after Lucy Letby’s first trial.
She widened it in March to investigate staff members suspected of homicide by serious negligence. “This offense, distinct from manslaughter, targets the seriously negligent action or inaction of individuals,” said the police.
The investigation is still in progress, she said on Tuesday.
In recent months, doubts have emerged concerning the guilt of the former nurse, presented as the worst newborn killer in the modern history of the United Kingdom.
Fourteen medical experts in neonatology notably re -examined the case and called into question the conviction of Lucy Letby. An independent judicial commission agreed to look at it in February, to “detect, investigate and, if necessary, refer possible legal errors to the courts of appeal”.
If Lucy Letby has always proclaimed her innocence, British justice has twice refused him any possibility of appealing.
