- Angela Pollina, the former girlfriend of convicted former NYPD officer Michael Valva, has admitted in court to participating in the abuse and neglect of Valva’s 8-year-old autistic son Thomas, who died of hypothermia in 2020.
- Pollina has also confessed to attempting to delete evidence of the abuse from the family’s surveillance cameras.
- Pollina and Valva are facing charges of second-degree murder and endangering a minor for their “depraved indifference” to Thomas’s life.
“I was evil… I treated them badly. I mistreated them. I put them in the garage. It was horrible. Yes, I did…,” Angela Pollina (45) said about her stepsons Thomas (8) and Anthony Valva (10), in the trial she faces for the death of the youngest of them from hypothermia.
The children’s father, former NYPD officer Michael Valva (43), was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison in December on the same charges in connection with the January 2020 homicide of the Thomas boy, at his home in Center Moriches, Long Island (NY).
Pollina and the former police officer lived together with six minors: three of her daughters and three of his daughters from previous relationships. The mother of Valva’s children had claimed custody of her children in vain.
They acted with a depraved indifference. They just didn’t care if (the boy) Thomas lived or died.”
Kerriann Kelly, Assistant District Attorney, Suffolk County (NY)
Now facing her trial, Pollina admitted yesterday that she had done something “evil”: she forced her boyfriend’s 8-year-old autistic boy into a garage in freezing temperatures the night before he died. That testimony contradicted his own lawyer’s earlier claim that the former cop was responsible for the mistreatment of his children.
Pollina also admitted yesterday that she had tried to delete images of the incident from the family’s network of surveillance cameras to protect her and her boyfriend, Valva, after the fact.
“He had asked me to delete the images,” Pollina testified about her ex. “I did it for him. I did it for myself,” she said, quoted by New York Post.
Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly told jurors that Pollina and Valva “acted with depraved indifference. They did not care whether Thomas lived or died.”
When Pollina’s trial began last week, prosecutors told the jury that she was as culpable in the death of the boy Thomas as his father.
“Before a packed courtroom, Valva broke down as she expressed remorse: ‘I am filled with shame, broken and grieving,’ she said, as she appeared before Judge William Condon at Suffolk Criminal Court in Riverhead,” Pix11 reviewed in December.
The investigation determined that he forced his son Thomas to sleep in an unheated garage in freezing temperatures in January 2020, resulting in the death of the abused child in his home.
The investigation by authorities uncovered evidence of alleged physical abuse and neglect by Valva and his then-girlfriend Pollina between September 2017 and January 2020, including reports from the East Moriches School District alleging that on numerous occasions, Thomas and his brother Anthony arrived at school hungry, cold, dirty or marked with scratches, bruises, and cuts.
Valva and Pollina were arrested at the same time in January 2020 and charged with second-degree murder and endangering a minor by acting with “depraved indifference to human life.” Both then pleaded “not guilty.”
Since then, their respective attorneys have accused each other of what happened. “It was clear from all the evidence, substantial evidence, that she was the dictator of discipline in that home, that she controlled not only Michael, but she also had a lover in that home who lived with her,” the former cop’s defender, John LoTurco, said in November during the dramatic trial, according to ABC News.
“I will beat them until they bleed … It’s the only thing that works,” Valva wrote in a text message to Pollina about her children, Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Laura Newcombe told the jury during her trial last year, according to Newsday.
Justyna Zubko Valva, Thomas’ biological mother, had alleged abuse of her three children at the hands of her ex-cop husband and, in June 2020, filed a $200 million federal lawsuit. She had lost custody of her three children also for alleged abuse of power by Valva.
The mother alleged in the lawsuit that Long Island courts, school officials, and social service agencies failed to protect the child from her abusive police officer father, despite many signs before he froze to death.
“Zubko Valva had presented evidence to the court, CPS (child protective services), the police, and the children’s attorneys (Family Court) several times showing the severe physical, mental, and sexual abuse of his children by Valva and Pollina,” his plaintiff attorney said at the time. The mother regained custody of her two surviving children after Thomas’ death.
Several children in NYC died in the last months of 2021, victims of alleged abuse in their homes. Other cases were also reported in 2022.
In March 2022, NYPD officers responded to a call from a hospital emergency room where they found an 8-year-old boy unconscious with no obvious signs of trauma. He was later pronounced dead. The boy’s mother informed the police that he was autistic and did not speak, and both she and her boyfriend were initially questioned. The boy had been brought to the hospital with indications of child abuse in the past.
If you are a victim or suspect someone is being abused, especially if they are minor or elderly:
- Call 911 or 1.888.NYCWELL (1.888.692.9355).
- Text “WELL” to 65173.
- Review information at https://nycwell.cityofnewyork.us/