A registered nurse has been arrested following a 2-year investigation at a Virginia hospital, where newborns suffered horrific injuries.
Erin Elizabeth Strotman, 26, has been charged with malicious wounding and felony child abuse after an investigation into the incidents at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond, police said Friday.
Strotman, a Virginia native, graduated as a registered nurse in 2019. Her license to practice nursing has been suspended following her arrest.
Multiple babies suffered fractured legs and one baby even suffered a broken neck in the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
The arrest comes after newborn babies were found with fractured bones in the NICU in 2023 and 2024. The hospital recently said investigators did not know who was injuring newborn babies. But they suspected the person was a nurse or a doctor on staff.
“The Henrico County Police Division is utilizing all available resources to ensure a thorough investigation into this matter,” police said in a statement.
“This involves reviewing dozens of videos from inside the NICU. As previously mentioned, detectives are re-examining the 2023 and 2024 cases as part of this broader investigation.”
At one point, the hospital closed the NICU to new admissions while the investigation was ongoing. A statement on the hospital’s website said: “Out of an abundance of caution, we are not admitting any additional babies into our NICU at this time.”
But the unit was reopened despite not knowing who was injuring babies.
One couple whose son, Noah, suffered a fractured leg in the NICU, contacted Child Protective Services. Parents Dominique and Tori Hackey said then-newborn son Noah was doing well in the NICU until Dominique noticed his leg was discolored.
“It was kind of discolored, I told the doctor on staff,” Dominique told WTVR. He said the doctor took X-rays, and determined Noah had a fractured tibia in his lower leg, “and then she was like do you want to hold him?”
Dominique declined to hold his then-newborn son because he didn’t want to be blamed for injuring his own child.
“In my mind I’m like, I don’t want them to turn it around on us and say we broke his leg or anything like that. So I was like no, we don’t want to hold him,” Dominique added.
Noah’s mother, Tori, said the doctor told her “fractures occasionally happen” during normal procedures like giving an injection.
But multiple newborns suffering broken bones in the same NICU is impossible.
Dominique said he was concerned, so he contacted child protective services. In September he received a letter, which described level 1 physical abuse of Noah – the worst level in Virginia.
In October, police informed the Hackeys that other babies had also suffered broken bones at the Richmond hospital.
Henrico Doctors’ Hospital is a teaching hospital affiliated with a university, so patients and families can’t file lawsuits against the hospital.
Officials are investigating incidents at other hospitals where Strotman worked as a nurse.
Strotman is being held in a Richmond jail without bond.
