Virginia Nurse Fired, Arrested and Charged With "Felony Malicious Wounding" & "Felony Child Neglect"

 From CNN:

Dominique Hackey was waiting to cradle his preemie son for the first time when a nurse delivered devastating news: The newborn’s left leg was fractured. In an instant, Hackey’s world shattered.

His wife, Tori Hackey, had just been discharged after giving birth to fraternal twins, Micah and Noah. The boys, born in September 2023 at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, are the couple’s first children.

Because they were born at 28 weeks and weighed only about two and three pounds, respectively, the twins had remained in the neonatal intensive care unit — with Micah barely hanging on, Hackey said. And now, seven days after birth, the healthier twin’s leg was bruised and broken, he said.

“I was confused and heartbroken,” he said. “I’m a first-time parent. I have no background in the medical field. You’re telling me my baby has a fracture? How did it happen? They had been scanned before, and they’d have said something if anything had popped up (at that time).”

Out of fear he would be blamed for the injury, the 33-year-old Hackey said he turned down the offer to hold his son that day.

More than a year later, Hackey and other parents may now be closer to understanding what happened at the hospital, which has reported a series of mysterious injuries to newborns over the past several years.

Police last week arrested a former nurse at the hospital, Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, and charged her with malicious wounding and felony child abuse in a November 2024 incident involving another newborn.

Investigators are now looking into a total of seven potential abuse cases at the hospital: three in 2024 and four in 2023, including Noah’s, said Shannon Taylor, the commonwealth’s attorney for Henrico County.

In a statement last week, Henrico Doctors’ Hospital said it was “shocked and saddened” by the nurse’s arrest and is assisting Henrico police in their investigation.

“At this time, we are not admitting new patients to our NICU,” the hospital added. “For babies needing NICU care, we will assess them, stabilize, and facilitate a transfer to an appropriate facility, once available.”

“I could not stop the tears from flowing. I have a lot of guilt. A lot of regret. And a lot of anger that the hospital let it get this far, that we had all these parents whose children were affected,” he told CNN. “My son was one of her first victims. My son’s first emotion was pain. And as a father, that breaks me.”

It’s unclear whether Strotman, 26, issued a plea at her arraignment. Her attorney, Scott Cardani, declined to comment when reached by CNN.

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In a statement Tuesday, Henrico police refuted theories shared on social media that all the infants targeted were Black.

“The preliminary investigation indicates this information is not factual,” police aid. Hackey agrees.

“The children were different races, and there were twins and singletons,” he said. “There was no real methodology there that we can put together. The only thing they have in common is that they are all boys.”

NBC also reported on this story: