Lucy Letby, a nurse, has denied ‘staying around’ after a shift to ‘root in a bin’ for a paper towel used in the resuscitation of a baby she is accused of trying to kill.
More than two years after the alleged attack, the fragment was discovered in a shopping bag under the 33-year-old’s bed when she was arrested by Chester police.
It served as a live notation of the medications administered to the baby as doctors fought for a half-hour to rescue him, Manchester Crown Court jurors were told.
On the afternoon of April 8, 2016, the infant boy, Child M, passed out on the newborn ward at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Letby is accused of attempting to murder him by injecting him with air.
She denies the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of 10 others, including Child M, between June 2015 and June 2016.
Nearly four hours after Child M was revived, the child’s doctor ‘meticulously’ recorded the process in his notes which included the administering of six doses of adrenaline.
Prosecutor Nick Johnson KC suggested to Letby: ‘You hung around to get your hands on it before you left?’
Letby said: ‘I stayed late to do the work that still needed doing, I was busy with other babies on the unit.’
Mr Johnson said: ‘You were hanging around to get your hands on the paper towel?’
‘No,’ said Letby.
Mr Johnson said: ‘To go rooting in the bin for the paper put there by your colleague.’
Letby said: ‘No, I have never rooted in a bin.’
The prosecutor said: ‘Because you sabotaged (Child M) by injecting him with air?’
Letby said: ‘No I didn’t.’
A blood gas printout from Child M, along with several hundred shift handover sheets – some containing names of children she allegedly targeted – were also found in police searches.
Letby has told the court the documents would innocently ‘come home’ in her uniform pocket at the end of her shifts and that she would ‘collect paper’.
She has denied they were ‘important’ to her, unlike household bills and bank statements that she would shred.
Letby is also accused of attempting to murder another baby boy, Child N, two months later.
The prosecutor accused her of ‘doing something to destabilise’ the infant at the end of a day shift on June 14.
A nursing colleague later noted Child N was ‘very unsettled early part of night’.
Mr Johnson said: ‘Are you saying this is a coincidence that this happened just after you went off shift?’
‘Yes,’ said Letby.
Mr Johnson said: ‘The reason you had done something to him … was to create the impression that there was a progressing decline that you could take advantage of the next day.’
Letby said: ‘No, that’s not what happened.’
The court has heard Child N’s incubator alarm sounded and he deteriorated in Letby’s presence within three minutes of her arriving at the unit on the morning of June 15.
Mr Johnson said: ‘You had set him up to fail at the end of the previous shift and you were making a beeline for him to make it look as if he had got a problem from the night shift.’
‘No,’ said Letby.
Mr Johnson said: ‘It happened within a minute or two minutes of you arriving in the room?’
Letby said: ‘Yes.’
Mr Johnson said: ‘Just bad luck, is it?’
‘Yes,’ repeated Letby.
The trial continues on Thursday.