At approximately 10:45 p.m. on Dec. 11, 2025, 19-year-old Jose Martinez allegedly stabbed one of his housemates 13 times with a kitchen knife at a Richmond recovery residence run by Starfish Recovery & Wellness.
The victim suffered a punctured lung along with multiple other stab wounds, and required surgery to repair his diaphragm, according to a criminal complaint filed in Richmond General District Court.
Martinez fled the scene and was not arrested for more than two months. He was arraigned Feb. 19 and charged with attempted second-degree murder.
Why Martinez was considered an appropriate candidate for group living at Starfish Recovery & Wellness is unclear.
One month earlier, he had been charged with attempted malicious wounding in connection with another alleged stabbing in August.
A Richmond police officer wrote in a criminal complaint:
On 8/09/25, Victim called 911 to report being stabbed with a knife by Jose Martinez. Upon arrival to meet Victim, I observed a cut to Victim’s shirt and a wound across Victim’s chest. Furthermore, a witness gave account of seeing Jose Martinez use a kitchen knife to slash at Victim.
The day after his arrest in that case, Martinez was charged with assault and battery in connection with a Nov. 4, 2025, jail fight, though prosecutors did not ultimately pursue that charge.
Because the court files contain no information about Martinez’s bail conditions, it’s unclear exactly how or when he came to live at Starfish. But the organization could easily have learned of his criminal charges, which are public information that is accessible through Virginia’s online court records system.
Notably, another stabbing-related incident was reported at a Starfish men’s home the year before.
On June 16, 2024, two individuals called 911 to report the incident as it unfolded. According to dispatcher notes, the first caller reported “someone is trying to stab resident.” The second caller said “someone is in danger upstairs” and that the suspect lived at the home.
Police arrived within minutes. Responding officers later testified that the accused “was highly uncooperative and verbally aggressive throughout the arrest process.” The alleged perpetrator was charged with attempted malicious wounding, though prosecutors ultimately declined to pursue the case.
A few months later, another 911 call log revealed that a 9mm handgun was discovered in a resident’s room at the same house.
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Concerns raised by the recent stabbing echo warnings that Starfish leadership itself has raised in the past about violence in recovery homes.
Four years ago, Starfish co-owner and Chief Wellness Officer Stephanie Bellanger emailed the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences (VARR) and the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) with concerns about a lawsuit surrounding a 2021 fatal stabbing at REAL Life.
She pointed to the lawsuit’s mention of VARR’s Code of Ethics, which states that VARR operators have the duty “to provide for the health, safety and welfare of each resident.”
She then wrote:
The lawsuit goes on [to] state the myriad ways in which Real Life and the defendants named in the suit failed to do just that: accepting violent offenders, not having a vetting process, or if a process was in place, not adhering to it, not having a selection process for house managers, or if one was in place, not following it (as this house manager was allegedly promoted after less than 30 days in the program), and not having adequate measures in place to secure the safety of residents knowing that its population includes violent offenders.
According to numerous former residents and house managers, as well as months of management text messages I reviewed, the exact conditions Bellanger described have persisted at Starfish for years — making incidents such as the recent alleged attempted murder unsurprising.
In fact, the same year Bellanger voiced concerns about REAL Life, Starfish had multiple house leaders with less than 30 days in the program as well as several with recent assault and battery convictions.
Similarly, court records show many residents that year had prior convictions for violent offenses, such as felony assault, armed robbery, and entering a building with intent to commit assault, among others.
Several also had recent violent charges that prosecutors ultimately declined to pursue, including malicious wounding, strangulation, and abduction by force.
In the years since, residents and house managers have told me the organization often admits residents they feel aren’t appropriate for a recovery house environment.
They say the homes often experience rapid turnover and admit people who are still using substances or detoxing, struggling with severe mental health symptoms such as extreme paranoia, or otherwise in unstable conditions.
“They’ve even taken people that’s not even addicts,” said Blake Butler, a former Starfish house manager. “I had a guy at the Edgewood House that didn’t have no addictions at all. … He belonged in a mental health facility.”
Another former resident described a housemate whose behavior raised concerns:
One girl in my house, she goes and runs the streets every day screaming and yelling at cars — “I’m so sorry for anything I’ve said or done! God bless you!” Like screaming at the top of her lungs, walking down the middle of the road. … And they (Starfish staff) are like, “Yeah, we know she does that.” But like, why aren’t you doing anything to help her?
Mary C, a former house manager, corroborated this account.
Another resident, who came to Starfish from what she described as a high-quality inpatient treatment program, was stunned to find so many people at Starfish needing more intensive care than the organization and its outpatient affiliate, StarCity Behavioral Health, were equipped to provide.
“I was noticing that a lot of the people that were in the program really needed to go to therapy and also [inpatient treatment],” she said. “It was very obvious that they needed a higher level of care. … I was just kind of shocked that no one was really stepping in. There’s no treatment team that was able to kind of identify some of these bigger issues that the patients had.”
Residents say admitting people who are not appropriate for a recovery house is not an act of charity. The determining factor, they say, is money.
These reports come against the backdrop of a proliferating business model that makes nonclinical recovery homes look more like unlicensed residential treatment programs. Under this model, the housing serves as a pipeline to operators’ affiliated outpatient programs, which residents say are often required as a condition of living in the home.
>> Review reporting on the sober-home-to-outpatient pipeline
To ensure residents qualify for Medicaid billing through those programs, operators recruit people in the earliest stages of recovery — when they are often at their most vulnerable — effectively filling the homes with a patient population that closely resembles that of a licensed residential treatment facility.
Because clinical services are provided off-site, the homes themselves remain classified as non-clinical recovery residences — a designation that exempts them from requirements to provide qualified 24-hour staff, adhere to occupancy limits, and meet the minimum human rights standards required of licensed residential programs.1
Some residents say that by intentionally filling these homes with people newly in recovery — including those with more serious mental health challenges — the model increases the risk of volatile situations and incidents such as the alleged attempted murder at Starfish.
Former resident and assistant house manager Zachary said he wasn’t surprised to hear about the recent stabbing. He explained:
You’ve got a mix of people who were newly clean and newly sober — even six to eight months of first being sober, your head’s not fully cleared — and then you’ve got a lot of people in a small confined space and a lot of stress and you’ve got people who have spent lengthy times in jail, people who are facing jail sentences … it’s just a little bit of a volatile environment.
As previously reported, DBHDS has advocated for closing the loophole that allows this model to operate outside the state’s licensing framework.
State Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg’s recovery housing oversight bill, Senate Bill 270, originally included language that would have addressed the issue by removing sober home operators’ ability to require clinical services as a condition of residency.
That provision was later significantly weakened, at least in part because of reservations raised by VARR — the accrediting body for Starfish and several other operators that use this model.
The issue, however, is likely to remain under discussion. The proposed legislation continues the recovery housing workgroup created last year under SB838 that will continue examining oversight of recovery residences and provide more opportunities for residents and advocates to weigh in.
In the meantime, anyone with experience in recovery housing who would like to share their story is encouraged to reach out.
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Note: As I’ve reported over the last few years, Starfish owners Frank and Stephanie Bellanger asked that I cease all contact with them in May 2023. I have not heard from either of them as I’ve continued reporting on Starfish. As always, if they choose to respond to this story, I will promptly add their comments and publish a notification of the update.
More on Starfish Recovery & Wellness:
May 2023
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1. As noted in previous installments, the intersection of recovery housing and clinical treatment is a complex issue that deserves a deeper examination than the scope of my recent reporting has allowed. I plan to explore the topic more thoroughly in the future and welcome anyone with insight on this issue — regardless of perspective — to reach out. I’m also happy to provide anonymity to those working in the field who may have reservations about weighing in publicly. [Return to article.]
Why this place is still open is beyond me. Frank and Stephanie are monsters.