London (AFP) – British police on Tuesday said they had arrested three senior staff at the hospital where nurse Lucy Letby was found to have murdered seven babies, on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
Police launched a probe at the Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) in northwest England in 2023 after Letby was convicted and jailed for life for murders said to have taken place between 2015 and 2016.
The probe aimed to find out whether the failure of hospital staff to act in the face of increasing deaths amounted to criminality.
Detective Superintendent Paul Hughes said three people "who were part of the senior leadership team at the CoCH in 2015-2016" were arrested on Monday on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
Hughes said the arrests, which were the first under the wider probe, had no impact on Letby's convictions.
The three were not named and were released on bail.
The Letby case shocked the nation during lengthy trials in 2023 and 2024, after which she was convicted for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more.
Letby, from Hereford, western England, was charged in 2020 following a string of deaths at the hospital's neo-natal unit, but has always maintained her innocence.
The prosecution said she attacked her vulnerable prematurely born victims, often during night shifts, by either injecting them with air, overfeeding them with milk or poisoning them with insulin.
But a panel of international experts said in February that the evidence used to convict her was wrong, and it was more likely that the babies had died from natural causes or bad medical care.
Her defence team has applied to the independent Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to probe whether there had been a possible miscarriage of justice in her two trials.