By Debbie Eremen
A mental health nurse, Laurence Tchapong, has been jailed for four years after being found guilty of wilfully neglecting a patient who later died at a psychiatric hospital on Merseyside, England.
Tchapong, 54, who moved to the United Kingdom from Cameroon and qualified as a mental health nurse in 2004, was sentenced on Tuesday, 1 September, 2026, at Liverpool Crown Court, following a trial in which she was found guilty by a jury on Wednesday, 22 July, 2026, of one count of wilful neglect.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Tchapong had been responsible for carrying out checks every five minutes on 22-year-old Amy Barber, a vulnerable inpatient with a complex mental health history who was receiving treatment at the Brooklands Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit in Bebington, Wirral.
According to the CPS, Barber had previously displayed significant self-harming behaviours and was subject to observation levels designed to manage risk and protect her safety.
On June 30, 2022, Tchapong failed to carry out the required checks during her evening shift, but later falsely completed records to suggest the checks had taken place. CCTV footage, however, showed this was untrue.
The court heard that Tchapong failed to check on Barber for about 25 minutes, despite falsified records claiming otherwise.
It was only when another nurse on duty checked on the patient at 8:40pm that emergency procedures were initiated, but the intervention came too late. Barber was rushed to Arrowe Park Hospital, where she died four days later.
An investigation subsequently found that Tchapong had falsely recorded several visits to the patient’s room on the observation sheet.
When interviewed at Birkenhead Police Station on September 6, 2022, she told police she had been dealing with competing demands that night, including other patients, caused by a shortage of staff, and denied wilfully neglecting the patient, maintaining that she had acted as best she could under the circumstances.
Sentencing her, Judge Anil Murray said the court was satisfied that Tchapong had held a grudge against Barber over a perceived lack of warmth towards her and because Barber had previously complained about her conduct, noting that Tchapong had earlier received a verbal warning after Barber took a photograph of her sleeping on duty and reported her to management.
Reading a victim impact statement to the court, Barber’s mother, Susan, described her daughter as the most caring, bright, funny and intelligent girl she had ever met, adding that her daughter’s drive had been taken away by a system that let her down.
The court heard that Barber had been diagnosed with a mental health illness in 2014 and was transferred to the Clatterbridge unit in 2019, with her mother urging the court and the public to learn from this.
