WARNING: Some of the details in this story are disturbing. Discretion is advised.
B.C.’s Health Minister confirmed a police investigation is underway after a woman entered the NICU at Surrey Memorial Hospital and had skin-to-skin contact with three babies.
Lindsey Susan Hirtreiter, 35, is facing three counts of assault and appeared in court on Monday for a bail hearing, but the matter was put over to Tuesday.
Health Minister Josie Osborne also confirmed that Fraser Health is investigating what happened.
“It’s very important that anything that can be learned from an incident like that is used to adapt policies and something I know that Fraser Health takes incredibly seriously,” she said.
“We’ll let that police investigation, of course, unfold and see where that goes.”
According to police, a woman went into the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Surrey Memorial Hospital, at 6:55 a.m. on Oct. 28 where she allegedly removed her shirt and held three infants, giving them skin-to-skin contact.
None of the infants was injured, police said, but hospital security removed the woman from the property.
In November 2016, Hirtreiter was sentenced to two years probation for causing an animal to continue to be in distress in connection with a brutal attack on a black Labrador on Valentine’s Day 2015 in Surrey.
Surrey RCMP said that Ryder had been stabbed with scissors in the face and eye and beaten with a blunt object. There were also pieces of jewelry and other items put in his body.
Ryder did survive the attack.
A decade later, Ryder is still alive and Global News spoke with owner Kassandra Allard.
She said she was “horrified” to hear about what happened in the Surrey NICU.
“Those parents are very lucky,” she said. “That should never have happened.”
Allard added that the NICU incident made her feel sick to her stomach.
“It makes me sick knowing what she’s already done to my own dog and what she could have possibly have done to those babies,” she said.