Aiexpress – Dominique Hackey was getting ready to hold his premature son for the first time when a nurse told him the terrible news: the baby’s left leg was broken. Hackey’s world fell apart in an instant.
He just got home from the hospital with his wife, Tori Hackey, who had just given birth to twin boys named Micah and Noah. The boys were born in September 2023 at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond, Virginia. They are the first children for the couple.
The twins stayed in the newborn intensive care unit because they were born at 28 weeks and weighed only two and three pounds each. Hackey said Micah was barely holding on. Plus, seven days after birth, the stronger twin’s leg was hurt and broken, he said.
“I was totally lost and sad,” he said. “I just had my first child.” Not at all. I’m not trained in medicine. Are you telling me that my baby has a break? How did it take place? They had been checked before, and if anything had shown up, they would have said something.
Hackey, 33, said he turned down the offer to hold his son that day because he was afraid he would be blamed for the accident.
Hackey and other parents may now have a better idea of what happened at the hospital after more than a year. Over the past few years, the hospital has been reporting a number of strange injuries to babies.
Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, a former nurse at the hospital, was arrested last week and charged with felony child abuse and giving a baby a hurtful wound on purpose in November 2024.
Seven possible cases of abuse at the hospital are now being looked into, three in 2024 and four in 2023. One of these is Noah’s, according to Shannon Taylor, who is the commonwealth’s attorney for Henrico County.
The hospital said last week that it was “shocked and saddened” by the nurse’s arrest and is helping the Henrico police with their investigation.
The hospital also said, “Right now, we are not taking on any new patients in our NICU.” “For babies who need NICU care, we will check them out, keep them stable, and help them get transferred to the right facility as soon as one becomes available.”
Cracked down at Strotman’s hearing on Friday.
“The tears just wouldn’t stop coming.” I feel awful about what I did. A lot of blame. “And a lot of anger that the hospital let it get this far and that all of these parents’ kids were hurt,” he told CNN. “One of the first people she killed was my son.” The first thing my son felt was pain. That hurts me as a dad.
It is not clear if Strotman, who is 26 years old, entered a plea at her hearing. When CNN called her lawyer, Scott Cardani, he refused to say anything.
The police are looking at hundreds of hours of surveillance film from a hospital
Investigators from Henrico County said they are looking through hundreds of hours of security video from the hospital’s NICU to find out what happened to the seven babies.
Taylor told CNN, “The investigation is still going on, and more babies could be found.”
Hackey said that the event made the pregnancy and birth even more stressful since she had already had two miscarriages. He said the couple picked the hospital to have their babies because they thought it had the tools to save their kids.
He said that at one point, they weren’t sure Micah would live because of his health problems, such as not having enough uterine fluid before he was born.
But Noah looked like he was doing great, and his family was hopeful.
Soon after Hackey got out of the hospital, he called his mother, who is in charge of care at a different hospital. He said she was shocked. He said that the hospital thought Noah’s left tibia, which is the bone between the knee and the ankle, might have broken while a nurse was giving him a shot.
His mother sat the couple down and showed them how nurses give shots to premature babies to show how unlikely it is that they will break a bone. He then said that Hackey’s mother called Child Protection Services and told them about the case.
It took the hospital weeks to conclude that the fracture was most likely caused by the injection, after which the investigation was ended. He said that Hackey’s family was told by Henrico County police in January 2024 that the case was over.
A police spokesperson refused to comment, saying that they were not able to give any more information because the investigation was still going on.
In a statement, Eric D. English, chief of police for Henrico, said, “We understand the feelings and emotions this investigation has caused for people in our community and beyond.” “We ask that you please be patient while our detectives look into all of the evidence in these cases.”
After Strotman was arrested, the hospital said in a statement on Friday that she was “a former employee” and that they would continue to help the police with their investigation.
The hospital said, “We are both shocked and saddened by this new development in the investigation. Our main goal is to continue caring for our patients and helping our coworkers who have been deeply and personally affected.”
“The NICU at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital has been giving babies in central Virginia the care they need to survive for more than 30 years, and we are still committed to making sure that care is available in our community.”
All questions from the media were sent to the police by the hospital.
