Overview:
After a family member reported it to social services, it still took nearly a year for police, social services and hospital authorities in Henrico County to pinpoint how a cluster of babies ended up with unexplained fractures.
The mystery began in the summer of 2023, when caregivers at a suburban Richmond hospital neonatal intensive care unit noticed several premature newborn babies in the ward were found to have unusual, inexplicable injuries: bone fractures. One of the infants’ grandmothers, a former NICU nurse, alerted authorities, suspecting her young grandchild had been abused.
Henrico Children’s Hospital officials, however, could not pinpoint what or who had hurt the children. An initial investigation went nowhere, but out of an abundance of caution, the hospital stopped admitting infants into its NICU ward.
Last week, however, after nearly a year of investigation — and not long after more cases of infants with fractures turned up in late 2024 — police arrested Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, 26, charging her with felony child abuse for injuring the children.
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Henrico County police said they have reopened all of the hospital’s injured-baby cases from 2023 and 2024. Authorities are sifting through hundreds of hours of surveillance video to fill in details of what happened, according to the release; at least seven babies have been hurt, and at least one child is Black.
Pattern Emerged in 2023
In November, the March of Dimes, a national charity dedicated to the health of mothers and babies, released data showing Black babies are about 1.5 times more likely to be born prematurely than white babies — and are nearly twice as likely to die before their first birthday. The March of Dimes also gave the U.S. a failing grade, D+, based on the number of babies born before term last year.
While police have not released evidence of racial bias in the case, an Urban Institute survey found that Black children and their parents are more likely than others to face unfair treatment in medical settings. Around 1 in 5 Black parents reported experiencing biased treatment while seeking health care over the past year — 10% more than parents who are white, Hispanic/Latinx, or other races.
The Washington Post reports that the families of the injured children attended Strotman’s arraignment hearing in metro Richmond last week.
The case unfolded in 2023 when Dominique Hackey, the father of twin boys who were born at 28 weeks, spent nearly three months in the NICU as his children fought for their lives. He told The Post that — after the heartache of two miscarriages and the premature birth of newborn twin sons — the exhausted couple felt helpless as one twin grew stronger but the other continued to struggle.
In September 2023, however, as both twins improved, a nurse told them that Noah, the stronger of the two babies, had a fractured leg and no one knew exactly why, according to The Post. Hackey called his mother, the former NICU nurse; she quickly reported the incident to Henrico County child protective services, triggering a hospital investigation.
But the hospital closed that probe not long afterward, Hackey told The Post, because they believed the injury may have come from an overly rough injection. Hackey told the paper that Henrico police, suspecting abuse, looked into the matter in late 2023 but investigators could not pinpoint a suspect and the case was closed again last January.
Case Reopened in 2024
A spokesperson for HCA Virginia told NBC News that Strotman is a former employee of Henrico Doctors’ Hospital, though the spokesperson did not specify Strotman’s role. Local news reports say she was fired around the time of her arrest.
The case was reopened in 2024, however, when the county child protective services department gave him “gut-wrenching” news: Hackey’s infant son, and possibly six other newborns in the hospital’s NICU, had been abused. That probe identified Strotman as a suspect and she was arrested in December.
“In late November/December, we discovered that three babies in our Henrico Doctors’ Hospital NICU had unexplainable fractures, similar to an incident involving four babies in the summer of 2023,” the hospital said in a statement posted on their website on Dec. 24. “We initiated a thorough internal investigation, informed the families and notified the proper authorities and regulatory agencies and worked collaboratively with them on their investigations.”
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According to news reports, state records show Strotman became a registered nurse in May 2019. It’s not clear when she began working at the Henrico Hospital.
Since the investigation began, Henrico Children’s Hospital has initiated new protocols to protect against possible abuse. They include increased monitoring of the NICU ward and stricter procedures around treating babies there.
Last week, the hospital issued a statement saying authorities there are “both shocked and saddened” by Strotman’s arrest, and are “focused on continuing to care for our patients and providing support to our colleagues who have been deeply and personally impacted by this investigation.”