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The British mother of newborn twin babies, one of whom was allegedly killed by neonatal nurse Lucy Letby while the other survived a murder attempt at the hands of the nurse, pleaded for the lives of her children as medics attempted to save them, according to recently heard court testimony.
"The minute I went into that room and saw the baby boy I knew he was gone," the grandmother of one of the twins told a U.K. court this week, Manchester Evening News reported. "He was blue. The room seemed full of medical staff. (Child A’s mother) was sobbing uncontrollably at this point. She said ‘Please don’t let my baby die, please don’t let my baby die.’"
The grandmother recalled medics telling the family that the child was not responding to treatment, and the mother continued to plead for her child’s life saying, "Please don’t let him die, please don’t let him die."
"You need to let him go," the grandmother told the mother after doctors said that "Child A" would likely have brain damage and further complications if it survived, but the mother urged the doctors to "carry on."
U.K. neonatal nurse Lucy Letby and a stock image of newborn babies (ER Productions Limited via Getty Images/SWNS)
The mother, who had been admitted to the hospital for an emergency Caesarean section, eventually relented and "simply nodded her head" and acknowledged that doctors should stop giving the child chest compressions.
The child had been handed over to the care of neonatal nurse Lucy Letby, who stands accused of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill 10 others, before collapsing in 2015 after Letby alleged injected air into the child’s bloodstream.
The next day, Letby was accused of attempting to murder the woman’s second twin baby, referred to as "Child B" in court testimony, by the same method.
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The child’s mother said that she was "frantic, anxious and extremely upset" after the death of her child and did not want Child B "to be out of my sight" but eventually attempted to watch a movie to calm down when she was told her second child was going through a "very similar situation" to her first child.
"We returned to the ward and attempted to watch a film and the next thing I know we were getting woke up by a nurse," the mother said. "’You need to come now’. My heart sank. Not my baby. Not again."
Child B was suffering from a rapidly falling heart rate and oxygen levels, and displaying discolored and spotty skin, which a consultant told the jury the hospital had never seen before.
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Cheshire Police in the U.K. search the home of Lucy Letby in 2018, when they found handwritten notes. (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)
The mother stayed with Child B throughout the night and said that her child was "restless" and acting "as if she was trying to tell me something was wrong".
The mother was discharged from the hospital but continued to come visit Child B daily at 9 a.m. and stayed on the unit monitoring her child. The child eventually recovered and was discharged with doctors believing it will have no adverse effects from the incident.
The mother said she "searched for a reason why" following the death of Child A and was "furious" when she was told that the post-mortem examination was inconclusive and possibly due to a preexisting blood condition.
The mother and father "asked for answers we never really got", the jury was told.
Letby, 32, pleaded not guilty this month to the accusations that she murdered five baby boys and two girls, and attempted to murder 10 other children between 2015 and 2016.
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Letby was a "constant, malevolent presence" in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital, prosecutor Nick Johnson argued before a jury at Manchester Crown Court in northwest England.
Johnson told jurors "a poisoner was at work" at the hospital, which he said had been marked by a "significant rise in the number of babies who were dying and in the number of serious catastrophic collapses" after January 2015, before which he said its rates of infant mortality were comparable to other busy hospitals.
Hospital authorities eventually determined that Letby was the "common denominator" in the deaths and that Letby's changing work hours aligned with each incident.
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The Countess of Chester Hospital, where nurse Lucy Letby used to work in Chester, England. (Christopher Furlong)
Police searched Letby's home in 2018 and reportedly found notes that appeared to be admissions that the nurse had intentionally murdered the babies she stands accused of killing.
"I don't deserve to live," read one of Letby's notes, which were projected onto a large TV screen for the courtroom to see earlier this month. "I killed them on purpose because I'm not good enough to care for them. I am a horrible evil person."
One note read in large capital letters: "I AM EVIL. I DID THIS."
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Ben Myers, a lawyer for Letby's defense, characterized the notes as expressions of "anguish not guilt."
Myers argued that "anyone with an ounce of human understanding" would perceive her notes as "the anguished outpouring of a young woman in fear and despair when she realizes the enormity of what is being said about her."
Fox News' Jon Brown contributed to this report.