That is not very surprising. She was texting about nursery 1 and Sophie Ellis because Sophie Ellis had been inappropriately assigned to a high needs child that night. She would always have needed to go into nursery 1 herself during that night, because the medication fridge was there. She was also very likely to be asked to co-sign on medicines by the nurses in that room.
But I think you are right and that the police were keen to make the link with the text six minutes before. I think that helps to explain why they brought this case at all. After all, Dr McCormick (who delivered the child) and Dr Gibbs (attending consultant) both saw the child as one who might suffer collapse and death, at the time. Later, so did Dr Evans. Famously, Dr Marnerides was still relying on an image from before Lucy Letby met the child for the evidence he produced in court. Dr Evans, by his own account, has had to work out a different explanation for his death from the one presented in court. The original pathologist and Dr Hawdon had no trouble explaining the death. This was a particularly weak case.
But the police obviously fell for some circular thinking around the texts. (I seem to remember they had a line in their documentary about how you could think her messages were perfectly normal until you lined them up with events.) It must have been very tempting to them, to put those messages six minutes before a collapse with Lucy Letby in the room.
The problem? Not only is the evidence that she was in the room for the fatal collapse shaky. They had to suppress witness statements, in their police interviews with her, to place her in the room at all. I suppose that's why you're always advised to say, no comment.
Here's a summary of the problems with the narrative placing Lucy Letby in the room for child C's collapse. This summary and the details are on Reddit. You don't have to trust them. It's possible to cross check against police interviews and court transcripts. Everything checks out, in my experience.
I doubt very much that Lucy Letby was in the room for that collapse at all
From:
www.reddit.com/r/LucyLetbyTrials/comments/1omn7s7/witness_accounts_of_staff_locations_before_baby/
Witness Accounts of Staff Locations Before Baby C’s Collapse
I have read the entire transcript with respect to Baby C. Please read all the relevant transcripts here. This covers the full testimony record on the personnel locations; reading it gives you the same picture the jury had of the witness evidence. Please read them before commenting.
Summary:
Sophie Ellis only documented Melanie Taylor in her contemporaneous notes. In 2018 she added Lucy Letby in her police statement.
She said she briefly left for the nurses’ station, heard the alarm, and returned.
For that first desaturation, she found Lucy Letby by the incubator.
After it resolved, Ellis stayed in the room for the final incident but sat at the computer, which faced the wall near Baby C’s cot about 1-2m away.
She described two incidents, saying Letby was there for both, though her notes show three.
Melanie Taylor’s 2018 police statement said she was already in nursery 1, and that Sophie Ellis called her over. She said only she and Ellis were at the cot using the Neopuff and inserting the Guedel airway. In court years later, she changed this to say Letby was already there and suggested using the airway.
Nurse B was consistent from police statement to trial: she entered on a call for help, saw Ellis and Taylor ventilating the baby, and said Letby arrived later from nursery 3. Also suggests she was likely also occupied in Nursery 3.
Police conduct: when Letby was interviewed the 2nd time, they already had statements from Taylor and Nurse B saying she wasn’t initially present. They withheld those statements and falsely told her only that Ellis had recorded her as being the only nurse in the room.
Letby’s recall: at that interview she said she couldn’t remember where she was. Later, once she’d been shown fuller evidence she said she recalled being called in later, consistent with Taylor’s and Nurse B’s original accounts.
Timing: only about six minutes between Letby’s last text (23:09) and the baby’s collapse (23:15), leaving little room for all 3 events.
No witness evidence or medical notes supports any claim of an inflated or distended abdomen, despite the allegation of air injected via a nasogastric tube.
No contemporaneous notes show Letby's presence, only Taylor and Ellis.