Erin Elizabeth Strotman
Henrico County Sheriff’s Office

A registered nurse who was arrested after 7 premature babies suffered broken bones in a Virginia NICU did not know she had been fired in November.

Erin Strotman, 26, was arrested and charged with malicious wounding and child abuse on Jan. 3.

Strotman was charged after multiple babies suffered bone fractures in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond in 2023 and 2024.

Strotman made her first court appearance by video on Friday, Jan. 3. She was represented by court-appointed attorney Scott Cardani.

During the hearing, Strotman said that she was still being paid during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2024. She added that she did not know she had been fired. She is being held without bond at Henrico County Jail.

Strotman’s charges are linked to one incident in the NICU on November 10.

NICU staff reported three premature babies suffered “unexplainable fractures” in late November and December 2024.

Four more premature babies were discovered with bone fractures in the NICU in 2023.

The hospital did not explain why the investigation took nearly 2 years. One mother said that one of her twins who received care in the NICU had passed away.

Another woman told 8News that her child had suffered 12 fractures while receiving care in the hospital’s NICU.

“It makes me sick, it truly makes me sick,” said Dominique Hackey, whose son Noah’s lower leg was fractured while in the NICU in 2023. Hackey said he received a letter from CPS confirming that his son’s injury was caused by level 1 abuse at the hospital.

“This person’s mentally ill and — to do that to all those families … there’s no happiness that I can feel at this point,” Hackey said.

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Strotman graduated as a registered nurse in 2019. According to the nursing board, Strotman has a multistate nursing license which is still active in Virginia as of Jan. 4.

Shannon Taylor, Henrico County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney, confirmed that Strotman was employed at the hospital in 2023 and in 2024 while child abuse investigations were ongoing in the NICU. The injured children were all minorities.

Investigators are still reviewing surveillance videos from the NICU and other hospitals where Strotman has worked.

“The Henrico County Police Division is utilizing all available resources to ensure a thorough investigation into this matter,” a statement read. “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.”

While she is in jail, Strotman is ordered to have no contact with any child under the age of 18. Her next hearing is set for March 24, 2025, at 2:00 p.m.

If convicted of all charges, Strotman faces up to 20 years in prison.