The father of the hospital NICU attack victim states that the babies involved shared a common trait.

The father of a Virginia toddler who suffered a bone fracture as a newborn in a Richmond hospital's neonatal intensive care unit says that all the victims shared a common trait, even though a motive remains unclear.

They were all boys.

According to Dominique Hackey, her son Noah, who suffered an unexplained fractured tibia in September 2023, had nothing else in common with the other children who also suffered different injuries and came from diverse families.

"The injuries sustained by the boys were diverse, with two of them having multiple injuries. Despite discussing the matter among ourselves, we have not identified a pattern for why our babies, who were all boys, were injured."

The NICU at Henrico Doctors' Hospital closed on Christmas Eve due to an internal investigation into a series of "unexplainable fractures" of bones in newborn patients, which included three cases in the past two months and four from 2023.

On Friday, Erin Elizabeth Ann Strotman, a 26-year-old registered nurse, was arrested by Henrico police on charges of malicious wounding and child abuse for one of the incidents. Police are currently investigating six more cases, including the Hackeys' case and three other reopened cases that were closed without charges last year due to insufficient evidence.

Hackey has denied reports that Strotman targeted children by race and clarified that only two of the victims were Black. He has been in touch with the families of all the other victims except one and hopes to meet them as well.

The identity of the victim injured by Strotman is still concealed by the court due to healthcare and juvenile privacy regulations. She will return to court in March.

Before the NICU unit at the hospital was closed, the father disclosed information about the newborn's enigmatic assault.

Noah, Hackey's son, was one of the 2023 victims. Until last month, he believed his case was an isolated incident, as officials suspected child abuse had caused his son's tibia fracture, but investigators lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges.

He spoke out publicly after learning that the attack on his son was not the only incident when the hospital announced it was closing its NICU on Christmas Eve.

Strotman was barely interacted with by Hackey during their NICU stay, but he remembers her as "nice" but "insignificant."

"Regardless of whether you were present or absent throughout the day, this individual managed to inflict harm on our children. This statement keeps me awake at night because the first emotion my son ever felt was pain, which is not supposed to happen. The first emotion should be joy and laughter, such as making funny faces at them. Unfortunately, this was not the case for my son and six other boys."

Strotman was placed on paid leave by the hospital, which Hackey says indicates they suspected wrongdoing before police announced her arrest last week. Despite confirming that his son's injuries were caused by serious child abuse, investigators have not provided Hackey with updates.

The hospital has provided police with hundreds of hours of surveillance video and is working with investigators.

The hospital expressed shock and sadness over the investigation's development and is committed to caring for patients and supporting colleagues who have been affected.

The hospital had not yet installed surveillance cameras at the time of Noah's attack, which was a day earlier than previously told. Since then, the hospital has put in 24-hour video surveillance and a means for parents to livestream their newborn's room. No staff members are allowed to enter without a second clinician for security purposes.

Police are unable to disclose more details about the case due to healthcare privacy regulations. Nonetheless, they are requesting anyone with information that could aid in bringing more charges to contact detectives at [email protected], visit P3tips.com or call Crime Stoppers at 804-780-1000.

He stated that the revelation that she was placed on paid leave due to our cases and that the hospital suspected her was new information to all of us, including his family and the five others he's been in contact with.

Hackey said he retained a lawyer Monday.

Despite the traumatic experience, the family is now looking forward, as both of the twins are now happy and healthy, he said.

"Having two miscarriages followed by twins, that's incredible," he said to Planet Chronicle Digital. "After being told you might lose one of them during the pregnancy and then after the pregnancy, it's a true blessing. Not many people get to be parents, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been blessed twice. As a result, I'll do everything in my power to keep them safe."