Newborn babies at a Virginia hospital have been suffering mysterious injuries. A nurse now faces abuse charges

Since 2023, seven babies in the neonatal intensive care unit of a Richmond hospital have suffered unexplained fractures and other injuries. Police last week arrested former nurse Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman and charged her with malicious wounding and felony child abuse.

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.