A Franklin County judge on Thursday, May 21, 2026, sentenced a Reynoldsburg man to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to charges tied to an attack on a nurse at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. The November incident, which unfolded in a neonatal unit while the man was holding a newborn, left the nurse shaken, though the baby was unharmed. In the months since, nurses' groups and hospital officials have clashed over how the hospital handled the scare.
Sentencing and charges
Asiakare Minor, 32, pleaded guilty to abduction and violating a protection order and was ordered to serve three years, according to 10TV. The plea was accepted in Franklin County court on Thursday. The station also reports that the hospital declined to comment specifically on Minor's sentence.
What happened inside the hospital
Surveillance video from the Nov. 6 encounter shows a man holding a newborn and yanking a nurse by her shirt collar as staff rushes in to intervene. Hospital officials told local reporters that staff and security de-escalated the disturbance, and the infant was not physically harmed, according to WLWT. Police say the baby's mother had an active protection order against the man, which led to charges that included unlawful restraint and assault.
Nurses demand better protections
The Ohio Nurses Association and local union leaders say the sentence does not address what they describe as a systemic safety problem for caregivers. They argue that this case highlights a workplace where nurses are expected to absorb violence as part of the job. They have urged the hospital to preserve footage, conduct a formal debrief, bar the man from the campus except for necessary care, and provide paid leave and support for the assaulted nurse. “There's a lot of anger and sadness that this could happen to one of our own,” a union leader said when the case first became public.
Why it matters
Federal public-health and workplace-safety agencies say assaults on health workers are widespread and often underreported, and they recommend formal prevention programs, training, and threat-assessment systems. The NIOSH Science Bulletin lays out how health care workers experience higher rates of nonfatal workplace violence and details institutional steps hospitals can take, including de-escalation training and careful incident tracking, according to NIOSH. Local nurses point to the OSU case as a real-world example of why those national recommendations matter at the bedside.
What's next
The plea wraps up the criminal case for now, but nurse advocates say their push for policy changes and better post-incident support at OSU is just getting started. 10TV reports the assaulted nurse, identified in coverage as Samantha McLeod, said the attack “changed her life.” Union leaders and patient-safety advocates say they plan to keep pressure on hospital leadership to revisit visitor and security policies in light of what happened in that neonatal unit.
