Report: Former Dover Woods Employee Decries Conditions at Toms River Facility

A former employee of the former Dover Woods residential health facility has told a local television station that the two-story building near the intersection of routes 9 and 70 is filled with mice, some patients are covered in urine and there is little in the way of supervision from staff.

Dover Woods regularly houses people with psychological issues and has been the subject of a good amount of media scrutiny over the way its residents are housed and, sometimes, released from the facility.

According to the report by NBC10, three people have recently died at Dover Woods and the deaths are being investigated by the state Department of Community Affairs. The same state agency ordered the facility to create a cleaning plan in November after its employees inspected it, instructed that staff of the facility "free the space of noxious odors, and clear trash and debris," the NBC10 report said.

The former employee, Neil Nunez, was a kitchen manager at Dover Woods and told the TV station that residents were served subpar food – he described the meat as being like "paste" – and said residents were sometimes served sour milk.

Ralph Stocco, a spokesman for the Toms River Police Department, told NBC10 there has been an uptick in calls related to Dover Woods this year, and the department has investigated calls of vagrancy and intoxicated people from the facility showing up at local businesses.

The state DCA has not conducted a followup inspection of the facility, the NBC10 report said, and the management of Dover Woods did not respond to the television station's request for comment.