Lucy Letby's haunting final words to mother of premature baby boy she had just injected with air

Lucy Letby told the mother of a premature baby boy that she thought he was going to die - moments after she injected him with air to murder him.

The woman, herself a GP, had been woken in the middle of a night by panicked nurses after her son, known as Baby C, unexpectedly collapsed.

She was rushed into the neo-natal unit where doctors were frantically trying to resuscitate the infant and asked by a nurse, who she had never seen before: 'Would you like me to call a priest?'

'Even though I was faced with a situation where my son was having CPR, I was still quite confused and disorientated as to what was going on, and until I was asked that question, it really didn't hit me that there was a chance he was going to die,' she told the public inquiry into Letby's crimes at the Countess of Chester Hospital.

The mother said: 'I asked her. I said, you know, 'Do you think he's going to die?' And she said, 'Yes, I think so.' And at the time - you know, as I say, I didn't know this nurse's name, I hadn't seen her before, but I believe this was Lucy Letby.'

Her son was the second baby boy murdered by Letby, 34, in the space of a week, in June 2015.

He had been born 10 weeks premature, weighing just 1lbs 12oz, by Caesarean section following a difficult pregnancy where his growth was restricted in the womb.

Although he was small, the inquiry was told he wasn't expected to die and medics were baffled by his sudden collapse and death.

Letby killed him when he was four days old by injecting air into stomach via his feeding tube and compromising his breathing.

Also at the inquiry yesterday, the mother of another baby murdered by Letby was praised by a judge for 'never giving up' trying to find out why her daughter died.

Lady Justice Thirlwall told the sobbing woman she had 'done everything' for her child.

Known as Baby D, she was the third tot murdered by the neo-natal nurse at the hospital in two weeks.

During three hours of emotional testimony yesterday the mother, who cannot be named, said she contemplated suicide and thought she was 'losing her mind' because 'nothing made sense' about her baby's sudden death in June 2015.

She fought to access her daughter's medical notes, rejected doctor's explanations for her cause of death and demanded an inquest.

The mother even hired a solicitor and suggested police be called in, but was initially told it was not a criminal matter.

Lady Justice Thirlwall, who is heading an inquiry into Letby's crimes, told her: 'At great personal cost you have never given up and your evidence to the inquiry leaves everyone listening in no doubt of your determination and persistence on behalf of your daughter and for you and your husband.

'You have done everything you could.'

The hearing in Liverpool was told that Baby D was born three weeks early, weighing 6lbs 14oz.

She was being treated on the unit for an infection when Letby attacked her three times in a single night shift, finally killing her with an injection of air. The mother also said CCTV inside the hospital nursery could have prevented the murder.

Every hospital in England with a neo-natal unit has been asked as part of the inquiry if they have considered installing CCTV in the wake of Letby's killing spree.

Baby D's mother said she never had a conversation with Letby, but described feeling 'very uneasy' in her presence and that she 'stood out' as 'odd'.

On the night her daughter died, she remembered Letby 'doing nothing useful' as medics fought desperately to save her baby, adding: 'She was just looking at us crumbling and crying.'

She also described how the doctor trying to revive her daughter had a phone to his ear while he was performing CPR and she later found out that staff had mistakenly believed it was another victim, Baby B, who had collapsed, not Baby D, and the other child's mother had been called in error.

Letby had attacked twins Baby A and Baby B a week earlier, killing Baby A. Baby D's mother suggested the confusion was created 'maliciously' by Letby.

Baby D's mother said that after her daughter died, things just 'didn't add up'. Doctors had said the child was responding to antibiotics, but the official cause of death was given as an overwhelming infection.

'I just didn't know if what I was doing was right but I kept thinking, 'this is my daughter's voice, I can't give up here, so I will carry on even if I am on my own'.' She accused the hospital of hiding information from the coroner.

The inquiry has heard that a report carried out by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health that was sent to parents in April 2017 had sections relating to Letby removed.

Baby D's mother said that if she had known suspicions about a member of staff had been raised, she would have gone to the police herself.

She added: 'If I wasn't failed in the first place by the Countess, my daughter wouldn't have ended up in intensive care, I wouldn't have ended up poorly and destroyed, and she wouldn't have been in a place where someone was preying on babies.'