Woodbridge youth program to close after 2 counselors were kidnapped and killed
A program for troubled youth in Woodbridge, Va., is closing after a resident was charged last week with killing two of its counselors in a similar fashion within a five-month period, a local social services official said.
The announcement came Tuesday night during a contentious public meeting where Woodbridge residents questioned social services and police officials about Youth Quest Independent Living, which is in the Dominion Middle Ridge Apartments.
A Prince William County supervisor called the meeting after 19-year-old Ronald Francis Dorsey Jr. was charged with murder Friday in the deaths of Lizeth Lopez, 36, and Erica Janelle Hickson, 37, prompting worries among nearby residents.
Police said the two counselors were abducted during evening shifts and strangled on the YouthQuest site, and then their bodies were dumped near the apartment where Dorsey lived as part of the independent living program for foster children and juvenile offenders between ages 17 and 21. As many as eight young people live in four rented apartments at the site, county social service officials said Tuesday.
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Lopez disappeared on April 17, and her body was found April 29. Hickson was abducted during a shift on Aug. 4, and her body was discovered the next day.
Maj. Steven J. Thompson of the Prince William police said at the meeting that Dorsey was interviewed along with most everyone else in the area after Lopez’s killing. But at the time, “we had nothing that said that Mr. Dorsey committed that crime,” and he wasn’t considered a suspect.
A woman who spoke during the community meeting but did not give her name because of privacy reasons described herself as Lopez’s friend. She said that there was not enough security for counselors after Lopez’s killing in April. YouthQuest is run by a for-profit company called Intercept Youth Services based in Richmond.
“Liz was a huge advocate of the program,” she said of YouthQuest. But “these girls were then put back on without any security, and then somebody else had to die, somebody with a son. It was reckless.”
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Intercept officials declined to attend the meeting and declined to answer any questions about the program or its security measures after the first counselor’s death. YouthQuest programming director Natalie Elliot on Wednesday declined to address whether the Woodbridge location was permanently closing, but she did say that “there are no youth living there anymore.” She would not say when or where they were moved.
In a brief statement, Elliott also called the women’s deaths “an unthinkable tragedy” and said the company was “committed to the safety and well-being of all of our clients, staff and the community at large.”
Courtney Tierney, director of Prince William’s Department of Social Services, said Intercept had operated in the county without incident for 16 years.
Tierney said it was a “very complicated process” to place a young person in a program like YouthQuest, involving social services or court services and the provider. Funding for the program comes from the state, Tierney said, with some matching funds from the county.
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Darrell Jordan, chairman of the northern region of the Virginia Department of Social Services, said that “the vast majority” of the roughly 85 YouthQuest clients around the state are teenagers who were aging out of foster homes and had no criminal history. However, he could not say whether Dorsey had a criminal background.
Several people who attended Tuesday’s community meeting expressed concern about having the program as a neighbor without receiving notice. Police and social services officials at the meeting said there was no law requiring such notice and emphasized that problems are rare.
A few people who had been in the foster system also rose to speak Tuesday night, saying they didn’t want the events at the Woodbridge program to be used to stigmatize foster children or programs designed to serve them.
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The Washington Post reviewed online records of Intercept’s independent living programs from the state Department of Social Services, showing dozens of violations over the past six years. Several involved the YouthQuest program failing to adequately screen clients or readmitting clients after violent behavior, the records show. In each case, deadlines were given for the program to correct the problem, but the resolution could not immediately be determined.
Search warrants show detectives concluded by May 10 that Lopez probably was abducted on the job because she failed to clock out from work or fill in work logs past 10 p.m. during the Sunday evening shift she was working.
Youth counselors were responsible for making sure that residents were in the apartments YouthQuest leased and were abiding by its rules. The counselors would walk or drive between the apartments, according to a search warrant.
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Investigations that have not been described in court filings led detectives to Dorsey, who was arrested Friday after the discovery of Hickson’s body.
A teen who was part of the program and was friendly with Dorsey said she was unaware of his having any problems in the program. She said that during the couple of months she spent in the YouthQuest program in Woodbridge, they would hang out together.
“He was a very chill person,” said the teen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe behavior while she was a minor. “I was totally shocked when I found out he had been arrested for the murders.”
The teen said that after Lopez’s death, the largely female staff of counselors was frightened. YouthQuest responded by having a male counselor available on call to accompany them on their rounds, the teen said.
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The teen also said she thought the program was well run overall.
Altovise Hester formerly worked as a day counselor and site supervisor for Intercept at a Chesterfield County group home called Summit House, which served 10 youths. Hester said she left in 2014 after she was injured on the job by a youth and she grew increasingly frustrated by the organization’s staffing cuts, which she attributed to cost savings.
Hester said one of youths in her all-girls program threw a five-pound water bottle at her in January 2014 because she was frustrated with a manager. The bottle struck Hester in the back, bruising a kidney and her spine, she said. Hester said she took workers’ compensation and never returned to active employment.
Hester said such incidents were rare in the girls’ program but said she had heard of staff facing problems at facilities that catered to boys. Hester said the program did not have dedicated security — she and other employees would called Chesterfield County police if there was a problem. At times, the low staffing made her concerned about security, she said.
“They sent us to a mandated course to learn how to restrain someone,” Hester said. “Other than that, we were the security.”
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