![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/43167c99-c465-4a1f-8425-0c52a804deab/onecms_91427cb3-318b-47de-9e2a-b184b7f66221.jpg?w=400&q=0.3\")
Kerri Bedrick was found incompetent to stand trial in the death of her son, Eli Henrys.Suffolk County CPS investigated the deaths of Thomas Valva, left, and Eli Henrys.
\n","altTag":"","byline":"Justyna Zubko-Valva; West Middle Island Elementary School","organization":"","floatLeft":false,"floatRight":false,"imageSize":"","useFreeform":false},"content":{"__typename":"Article","id":"contentid/06b8d12c-c65d-4018-b122-5ecb8a34f8ed","lead":"The county repeatedly told the state it has a \"high number of less experienced staff.\"","body":"A 2-year-old boy drowned in a backyard pool while his grandmother slept and his mother showered.
\nSuffolk County’s Child Protective Services received a report that same day alleging he died because adults at the home failed to supervise him. It wasn’t the first time the agency looked into the family.
\nThe boy’s July 2024 drowning in Islandia came after at least nine prior complaints to CPS about supervision of other children in the home. It was one of several cases in which Suffolk CPS failed to fully investigate allegations of abuse or neglect, or properly assess children's safety — a pattern identified repeatedly by state officials, a Newsday investigation has found.
\nThe county blamed its failures on having \"a high number of less experienced staff\" — a phrase it used over and over again in responses to the state Office of Children and Family Services.
\nThe Islandia tragedy occurred amid a 10-year high in child deaths involving some form of abuse or maltreatment in Suffolk, state records show, even as several high-profile cases have prompted CPS reform plans and a grand jury report.
\nSince the 2020 freezing death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva in his father and stepmother’s garage, Suffolk has boosted the ranks of its CPS caseworkers by 36%.
\nBut the \"less experienced staff\" line reveals that more workers with less time on the job are now making potentially life-or-death decisions about children. As of March, more than half of CPS caseworkers had less than three years of experience, according to data provided by the county.
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_infobox \n\"The county should treat this as an urgent child-safety issue and respond with transparency [and] accountability,\" Legis. Jason Richberg (D-West Babylon), the minority leader and a member of the seniors and human services committee, said in a statement responding to the state documents reviewed by Newsday.
\nSuffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine ran in 2023 on a platform of reforming CPS, and has overseen much of the staffing increases.
\nRomaine also pledged more action in the wake of the killing of 9-year-old Eli Henrys in 2024. Eli's mother, Kerri Bedrick, crashed her car with the boy in the back seat after allegedly driving the wrong way on the Southern State Parkway while high on methamphetamines, prosecutors charged.
\nLast year, after Newsday reported that CPS caseworkers had dismissed numerous complaints about Eli's care, Romaine ordered the convening of a \"Child Fatality Review Team,\" a group tasked with examining systemic problems and recommending strategies to reduce deaths. County lawmakers had mandated the group be formed a decade earlier, but it had never launched.
Kerri Bedrick was found incompetent to stand trial in the death of her son, Eli Henrys. \nBut the fatality review team never got off the ground, Romaine's spokesman, Michael Martino, confirmed this month to Newsday. Romaine did not agree to multiple requests for interviews; neither did social services officials.
\n\"The Child Fatality Review Team is currently still in development,\" Martino told Newsday in an email, citing an \"extensive\" application process as a reason it hasn’t been activated.
\nCounty CPS agencies investigate the deaths of all children involving allegations of abuse or neglect, as well as cases in which the agency was actively involved in or already monitoring the child’s care.
\nThe state then reviews the county investigations for compliance with state regulations.
\nIn 2023 and 2024, Suffolk County CPS investigated the deaths of 42 children, according to records Newsday obtained from the state Office of Children and Family Services through a public records request.
\nOf those 42 deaths, the county determined that some form of maltreatment or abuse had occurred in 25 cases: 12 in 2023 and 13 in 2024, both of which were the highest since 2015, the data shows.
\nMartino said that figure reflects \"increased public awareness of child abuse and neglect, more frequent and informed reporting to the State Central Registry\" — a statewide screening service for abuse allegations — and \"evolving state criteria.\"
\nHe noted that as safe sleep practices, in particular, have become better understood, \"cases that may not have been substantiated in the past are now more likely to meet the threshold.\"
\nMost deaths that prompted a Suffolk County CPS investigation in 2023 and 2024 did not involve actual physical abuse. Instead, those fatalities occurred mostly while an infant was sleeping with a parent or family member, or a child was unsupervised in a pool, records show.
\nMartino noted the county has launched initiatives to reduce drownings and sleeping accidents, in addition to hiring additional CPS caseworkers.
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_chart1 \nIn 2023, the latest year for which statewide data is available, Suffolk County CPS investigated 6.7 deaths per 100,000 children, according to a Newsday analysis. That was slightly below the state average of 8.3 deaths per 100,000 children. Nassau County's rate was 1.7.
\nAcademics who study child welfare told Newsday that comparing child fatality rates between different areas is a tricky exercise, even when populations and regions are similar. Different CPS agencies, for example, may have varied criteria for cases they investigate.
\n\"It's really hard to know what's driving those numbers in a way that can enable us to draw real conclusions,\" said Kate Sullivan, a New York University Silver School of Social Work professor, citing the potential for disparate rates of poverty, housing insecurity and parental stress.
\nWhen the state finds errors in how county CPS agencies handle a case, it requires the agency to file a \"program improvement plan.\" Newsday recently obtained 14 of these reports through a public records request.
\nThe reports cover incidents between 2018 and 2025. Most of the 14 plans stemmed from child deaths: the Thomas Valva and Eli Henrys cases; five sleep-related deaths; one pneumonia case, a drowning, and another death for which records were not available.
\nState records involving child fatalities are anonymized, but Newsday used dates and other narrative information to identify publicly reported cases, including the 2024 drowning of the 2-year-old boy in Islandia.
\nNewsday is not publishing the boy's name in this story because none of his guardians were criminally charged in his death, unlike in the Thomas Valva and Eli Henrys cases.
\nThomas’ father, Michael Valva, an NYPD officer, and his fiancee, Angela Pollina, were both convicted of second-degree murder at separate trials for the boy's death of hypothermia in the garage of their Center Moriches home in 2020. They are serving terms of 25 years to life in prison.
![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/4acc26fd-4fc5-4070-a8cd-d9e2d98b9954/liVALVA220910_366740.jpg?w=400&q=0.3\")
Michael Valva and Angela Pollina were convicted of second-degree murder in the 2020 hypothermia death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva. \nEarlier this week, Newsday reported that a pending $9 million settlement in Thomas' mother's wrongful death suit against Suffolk could be scrapped and the case headed to trial.
\nMeanwhile, the criminal case against Eli's mother, Bedrick, has yet to be resolved. Bedrick was charged with depraved indifference murder following the crash that killed her son, but a judge in March ruled her incompetent to stand trial.
\nA year and a half before the crash, Bedrick wandered into a local firehouse showing signs of paranoia. Eli told caseworkers that his mother was hearing voices and that \"bad things\" were happening at home, but CPS took no action.
\nJorge Rosario, former chief of the Suffolk Legal Aid Society's children’s law bureau, said a family with a history of CPS reports, such as Eli’s — Bedrick was previously accused of neglect, abuse and drug use — should prompt caseworkers to examine a case more carefully.
\n\"Unless you've determined that somebody's making a report out of revenge or something of that nature, then I think you need to look deeper,\" said Rosario, who reviewed Suffolk’s program improvement plans at Newsday’s request.
\nBut Martino, the Suffolk County spokesperson, told Newsday in an email that \"All investigators proceed in the same objective manner regardless of whether or not there are prior reports.\"
\nIn the child fatalities for which Newsday reviewed program improvement plans, the state cited Suffolk CPS for multiple failures, including in \"gathering information,\" \"decision making,\" and \"case planning.\"
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_rosariocard \nIn one case involving the 2023 death of a 2-month-old boy who was found unresponsive in his bassinet, the state found that Suffolk CPS failed to properly assess the safety of the child’s family — including the potential risk posed to surviving siblings by the child’s father, a registered sex offender.
\n\"The father was aware [of] the conditions of his probation prohibiting him from being around children, however; he continued to frequent the mother's home, which placed the two nonverbal developmentally disabled siblings at imminent risk of harm,\" state records read.
\nThe number of errors cited by the state in Suffolk CPS’ handling of cases isn’t unusual for similarly sized counties in the region, according to state OCFS spokesman Daniel Marans. In fact, the state cited Suffolk CPS for fewer errors in the past five years than the state average, Marans said.
\nAnne Oh, counsel to Suffolk's Department of Social Services, said in a statement CPS has \"continued to implement critical improvements ... including hiring new case workers and providing additional training to our dedicated staff.\"
\nSuffolk County, responding to the state's criticisms, said that its CPS staff were in fact following protocol in some cases — they just did not always properly document it.
\nThe county’s four most recent program improvement plans (three stemming from 2024 deaths in which families had prior contact with CPS) include the identical \"less experienced staff\" explanations for why caseworkers did not properly collect information about a child’s household before or following a death.
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_doctear \nCounty officials told the state they were addressing the problem through \"face to face\" presentations to staff and \"informational emails\" to workers on how to correctly gather information at a child’s home.
\nThe administration would develop and deliver an in-house training for all CPS investigations staff and review eight cases a week at random, to be continued \"until the needed changes are evident,\" officials said.
\nMartino, the county spokesperson, said in an email that the county has also \"strengthened collaboration with schools, law enforcement, and service providers, and enhanced internal practices — such as increased use of medical experts in cases of suspected medical neglect — to better identify and mitigate risks to children.\"
\nSuffolk County has also sought to increase the ranks of its caseworkers, although it has seen multiple CPS staff retire or depart the agency, according to Martino.
\n\"This expansion has led to promotions of experienced workers into supervisory roles and increased hiring of new caseworkers, resulting in a larger proportion of less experienced staff in the field,\" he said.
\nCaseworker trainees increased from 20 to 37 between 2023 and 2024. The next year, many of those trainees were promoted, prompting the number of regular caseworkers to jump from 54 to 95, according to a Newsday analysis of Suffolk CPS staffing data.
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_chart2 \nFor caseworkers, \"The pay is not attractive,\" said State Sen. Dean Murray (R-East Patchogue), who has pushed to make state public employee pensions more generous. \"It's an extremely difficult job, one that you certainly are not going into for the money.\"
\nOfficials from the Suffolk County Association of Municipal Employees, the union that represents CPS staff, declined a request for an interview.
\nAnnette Mahoney-Cross, the union’s executive vice president and a former Suffolk CPS director, said in a statement that people should not retroactively judge how CPS handled cases.
STORYWIDGET: inCPS260503_mahoneycrossquote \n\"Child protective work is complex and challenging in ways few can truly imagine,\" Mahoney-Cross said. \"Caseworkers and supervisors are tasked with making heart-wrenching decisions that can impact children and families for a lifetime.\"
\nRomaine addressed CPS' shortcomings in a November 2024 conference on child welfare at Suffolk County Community College.
\n\"I don't want to see too many more missed opportunities,\" he said at the event, according to a video posted online. \"I want to make sure that we have the proper training, we have sufficient staff and we have the resources and the funding to do it.\"
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Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine has ordered a county "Child Fatality Review Team" to convene for the first time, a move publicly announced after a Newsday investigation into the death of a Middle Island boy whose mother was investigated numerous times by Child Protective Services.
\nThe team was established by the county legislature nearly a decade ago, but was never put into action, Romaine's office said in a statement. The county's new child fatality team is intended to ensure that CPS "learns from" prior cases of children in the system who died before they could get help. The team will get new members and meet quarterly, the officials said.
\nA Romaine spokesman didn't provide an answer when asked what specific benefit the county fatality review team would provide that couldn't be gleaned from a state fatality report after a child's death.
\nLast week, Newsday reported that Kerri Bedrick — whose 9-year-old son, Eli Henrys, died last year in a wrong-way crash — had been the subject of CPS complaints between 2018 to 2023. County CPS workers took no action against Bedrick.
\nIn a statement Wednesday to Newsday, Romaine also called for a "culture of accountability" within CPS.
\nNewsday's investigation into Eli's death detailed a report issued by the state Office of Children and Family Services. State law requires the agency to conduct an investigative review after a child's death. The state's review is done to see if laws were followed in the case of a child's death.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/43411f81-9adb-4d95-8e1e-0aaf86878d5d/3V7A0251.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine touts reforms to the CPS system initiated by his administration. \nCalled a Child Fatality Report, the state's probe is released online without any names of victims or those who filed complaints. The specific details in the December review enabled Newsday to confirm that it concerned Eli Henrys.
\nRomaine's office confirmed the county executive received a copy of the state's report. It is unclear whether Romaine’s office took any action following any type of review of the report.
\nSince Romaine took office in January 2024, the department has been working on CPS issues. By October, Romaine implemented a state policy known as Blind Removal, county spokesman Michael Martino told Newsday in a phone interview.
\nAccording to the policy, certain cases — without names or other identifying information — are presented to a committee, which includes supervisors and department leadership. The committee can then determine if a case should result in the child being removed from the custody of their parent.
\nA 2020 state directive explaining the purpose and use of the Blind Removal policy noted then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo supported the use of the policy "as a strategy for reducing overrepresentation of minority children in the foster care system."
\n"The goal of the ‘Blind Removal Process’ is to eliminate bias in decision-making during the child protective services removal process, decrease the overall number of children being removed from their homes and build a more equitable system of care," according to an October 2020 administrative directive from the state Office of Children and Family Services.
\nChildren were removed from their home in 22 of 39 cases, or a little over half the instances in Suffolk County this year, Romaine's statement said.
\nThe last complaint about Bedrick that CPS deemed unfounded was in 2023, following allegations of inadequate care when Bedrick wandered around her neighborhood and into a fire station while allegedly experiencing paranoid delusions.
\nRomaine alleged the department under prior County Executive Steve Bellone did not use the state policy. "We believe that had the Blind Removal policy been enacted by the prior administration, this tragic loss could have been avoided," Romaine said in the statement.
\nBedrick’s son, Eli, died in August. His death came before Romaine implemented the policy. Bellone did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
\nRomaine's office noted it has been increasing CPS staff since it came into the administration.
\nCounty payroll data obtained by Newsday shows the total number of caseworkers in the social services department went from 498 to 519 from 2023 to 2024. The year prior, under the Bellone administration, it had increased from 454 caseworkers to 498 caseworkers in 2023, a relatively steeper increase.
\nThere has been a 20% increase in caseworkers in the county’s social services department since 2020. In January of that year, the death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva prompted promises of sweeping reforms of the department. The boy died in January 2020 of hypothermia after his father hosed him down and forced him to sleep in a frigid, unheated garage.
\nThomas’ father, Michael Valva, a former New York City police officer, and his then-fiancee, Angela Pollina, were both convicted of second-degree murder. Each is serving 25 years to life in prison.
\n"From Day One, my administration has worked to reform CPS, especially after the system so badly failed Thomas Valva," Romaine said.
\nRomaine’s office said "newly developed enhanced training" has also been created through the Stony Brook School of Social Welfare and is being implemented. It’s unclear the exact timeline of when the new training was rolled out to CPS staff and what prompted the implementation.
\nState Sen. Roxanne J. Persaud (D-Brooklyn) said she was "deeply saddened and disturbed" by the reports of Eli’s death. Persaud sits on the state Senate Children and Families Committee.
\n"His death could have been prevented if the agency tasked with protecting him had acted," Persaud said in a statement to Newsday.
\nPersaud said she is "eagerly awaiting the implementation of changes" to improve CPS’ work.
\nBedrick is jailed at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead. She faces charges including aggravated vehicular homicide, fleeing an officer and aggravated driving while intoxicated with a child in the car.
\nShe has pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors said Bedrick's blood tested positive for methamphetamines, which her defense attorney and family said were prescribed.
","textAudio":null,"topElement":{"__typename":"Image","id":"contentid/0d4d865a-c9b2-4e15-9ec2-68949220f3ab","width":2100,"height":1355,"title":"inCPS250314_photos","headline":"","baseUrl":"https://cdn.newsday.com/image-service/version/c:YWUwMDY4NDAtZmYyOC00:Njk1Y2QwMWMtNmU1OC00/incps250314_photos.jpg","caption":"Kerri Bedrick, seen in September during her arraignment on charges she caused a wrong-way crash that killed her son, faced prior CPS complaints about her care of the young boy.
\n","altTag":"","byline":"James Carbone","organization":"Newsday","floatLeft":false,"floatRight":false,"imageSize":"","useFreeform":false}},{"__typename":"Article","id":"contentid/36cb09c5-647b-463b-a1ce-417c0dc24663","url":"https://www.newsday.com/long-island/investigations/fatal-wrong-way-crash-bzve8yiw","headline":"Long Island 9-year-old said 'bad things' happening at home before his death in mother's wrong-way crash","teaserTitle":"Long Island 9-year-old said 'bad things' happening at home before his death","body":"Kerri Bedrick wandered into the Middle Island Fire Department in January 2023 showing signs of hallucinations, paranoia and rage.
\nEmergency personnel took the 30-year-old single mother to the hospital and sent her then-7-year-old son to live with his grandmother while she underwent treatment.
\nThe incident was reported to Suffolk County Child Protective Services whose workers didn’t follow up with the fire department or people concerned she wasn’t ready to be released from the hospital. Records show CPS caseworkers investigated at least seven complaints against Bedrick since 2018 alleging drug use, neglect and abuse of her son, Eli. The boy told caseworkers after the fire department incident that his mother was hearing voices and that "bad things" were happening at home.
\nEach time, the caseworkers deemed the complaints unsubstantiated and took no action.
\nOn a cool night last August, police said Bedrick took methamphetamines and strapped Eli into his child seat in her Mitsubishi SUV. They left their Centerport home to get food. On the trip, Bedrick claims Eli fell asleep and that she didn't want to wake him because he hadn't been sleeping well so she kept driving. While on the Southern State she steered the vehicle the wrong way down the eastbound lane of the high-speed parkway, sometimes reaching speeds of 100 mph. Around Exit 42, in the Town of Islip, she crashed head on into another car, causing two others to collide as well.
\nPolice arrived to find Bedrick standing next to the wreckage. Eli was still in the back seat badly hurt, with life-threatening injuries. Troopers and sheriff’s deputies raced to perform CPR, but Eli died a short time later. He was 9.
\nA new state review of the boy's death is bringing fresh attention to failures in a Suffolk County child protection system that elected leaders had vowed to reform. The public review offers a rare look into the short and tragic life of Eli Henrys and a child-protection system that failed to save him.
\nState regulators found deficiencies in a pattern of the complaints about Eli’s safety while under his mother’s care, according to a child fatality review report done by the New York Office of Children and Family Services.
\nAt the time of the Aug. 22 crash, Bedrick had already been in the CPS system for nearly five years, more than half her son's life. The complaints ranged from inadequate guardianship to physical abuse to an allegation that she was selling and using methamphetamines in front of her son, according to the report filed in late December and posted on the state office’s website.
\n"I can't see how ... anybody would leave a child with this person," said Jorge Rosario, former bureau chief for the Children's Law Bureau for the Legal Aid Society of Suffolk County, who reviewed the report at Newsday’s request.
\nBedrick is jailed at the Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Riverhead. She faces charges including aggravated vehicular homicide, fleeing an officer and aggravated driving while intoxicated with a child in the car. Prosecutors said Bedrick's blood tested positive for methamphetamines, which her defense attorney and family said were prescribed.
\nShe and her attorneys, David Besso and Scott Zerner, declined to comment. Bedrick’s mother, Diane Bedrick, said in a brief phone interview that the complaints against her daughter were "lies." Kerri Bedrick pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/bd31341a-145b-4c20-95ab-1ea1e0378787/matik%20(48).png?w=400&q=0.3\")
Eli Henrys in 2018 and in the 2023-24 West Middle Island Elementary School yearbook. \nEli’s death came after county officials promised sweeping reforms to the department in the wake of the death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva. The boy died in January 2020 of hypothermia after his father hosed him down and forced him to sleep in a frigid, unheated garage.
\nA special grand jury found that CPS had received more than 10 reports alleging abuse against Thomas, but that CPS deemed those reports unfounded.
\nThomas’ father, Michael Valva, a former New York City police officer, and his then-fiancee, Angela Pollina, who also was convicted in his death for exiling him to the garage and failing to help him, are serving 25 years to life in prison.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/cf60a4b6-fb3c-43ba-adb9-5146e1c99d46/1C0A243634573.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Kerri Bedrick, inside courtroom at Suffolk County Court in Riverhead where she was indicted on Sept. 4, 2024, for driving the wrong on the Southern State Parkway last month and killing her son. \nNew York State law requires that the Office of Children and Family Services conduct an investigative review after a child’s death. If there are no siblings, the review is posted online without names of the victim or the people who filed complaints. The specific details in the December review enabled Newsday to confirm that it concerned Eli Henrys.
\nOCFS denied a request for supporting documents in the case, citing state law requiring confidentiality in child abuse cases.
\nThe state review criticized CPS’ handling of the fire department incident and highlighted problems in the handling of other complaints about Bedrick’s care of the boy. The criticism raises new questions about the effectiveness of the promised CPS reforms.
\nSuffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, who took office in January 2024, spoke of the pain of Thomas Valva's death and the need for reforms during his campaign. He declined to be interviewed for this story. John Imhof, Romaine's new Social Services commissioner, also declined to comment about Eli's case. Frances Pierre, who oversaw CPS as Social Services commissioner during the Valva and Bedrick cases, did not respond to a request for an interview.
\nMuch of Eli’s life was often filled with chaos, caught in the swirl of parents who frequently tangled with the law. Police were called to the house dozens of times over his lifetime.
\nEli’s father, Dean Henrys, who now lives on Staten Island, failed in court to win custody and visitation in 2020. He sued for custody because he did not feel Eli was safe with his mother, according to the state review.
\nWhen Eli was 3, Henrys came home drunk and hit Bedrick while she was holding the child. Police arrested and charged Henrys, who was sentenced to two years in prison.
\nHenrys declined to be interviewed but emailed Newsday a statement.
\n"Hopefully your story brings some much needed change to [Suffolk] CPS," Henrys wrote. "They failed one to [sic] many times."
\nRosario, the children's law attorney, also said the agency failed Eli, as well as his mother.
\n"You feel for this, this young boy who had the rest of his life to live," Rosario said. "You feel for the extended family. You know, I feel for the mother, too, because in this situation, she clearly needed help, and she wasn't given help."
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/c9be5155-865a-4678-8c52-c5976671978e/DSC00021.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
The resting place of Eli D. Henrys at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Cutchogue. \nEli spent most of his brief life in Middle Island, where his parents owned a home. In kindergarten, he became friendly with the granddaughter of his next-door neighbor Yolanda Celentano.
\nShe regularly got Eli off the bus because his mother often wasn’t home, she said in an interview.
\n"The kid would get off the bus, he’d be sitting on the stoop, and nobody’s ever home," said Celentano’s adult daughter, Heidi Dawood. "You’re in kindergarten."
\nCelentano said she was concerned about the people she saw constantly coming and going from Bedrick’s home, so she refused to let her granddaughter play there. Instead, the children would play after school at her house, and he would eat dinner there. His favorite meal was chicken cutlets.
\nHe was a sweet, well-mannered child, Dawood said. "Very respectful," she said, "He was a very, very good boy."
\nPolice stopped Bedrick 23 times in the six years from May 2018 through March 2024, according to records obtained by Newsday. Law enforcement officers charged Bedrick 12 different times with aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, a misdemeanor.
\nIn addition, Suffolk police responded to 37 calls at her home on Arnold Drive in Middle Island.
\nMeanwhile, CPS responded to at least seven complaints about Eli’s care.
\nSTORYWIDGET: INCPS250309_timeline \nOn May 30, 2018, Suffolk police stopped Bedrick in Mastic for making a right turn without signaling. The officer cited her for having a suspended license, which resulted from a DWI conviction in 2012, and not having an ignition interlock device in her car. She was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, according to court records.
\nThat same day, CPS received an allegation of inadequate guardianship. Six weeks later, CPS determined the complaint was unfounded, records show.
\nOn Jan. 21, 2019, police responded to a call about a "strangulation," according to police records. Henrys had come home intoxicated and hit Bedrick while she was holding 3-year-old Eli. Police arrested and charged Henrys, who was sentenced to two years in prison.
\nBedrick won custody of Eli, the state report said. CPS provided Bedrick with "preventive services," which are not detailed in the report.
\nBedrick said she suffered permanent injuries as a result of that fight, according to a recent court filing in which she is demanding that the Suffolk County Correctional Facility provide her with specific medication and to be transferred into the care of Peconic Bay Hospital. Among the alleged injuries she claimed are narcolepsy, spina bifida, daytime somnolence, attention deficit disorder, arthritis, learning disabilities, diminished cognitive function and cataplexy, which is a loss of muscle function.
\nThe state report did not note any injuries resulting from the domestic dispute.
\nThe months that followed her separation from Henrys were difficult financially for Bedrick, and to help cover the mortgage, she often took in renters, said Aleksandra Kovalchuk, her former co-worker at a beauty salon in Queens.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/efb4910d-30b2-410d-a611-37d0d21adcaa/af442882-a5ad-417a-a2c2-0.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Eli D. Henrys with his mother, Kerri Bedrick, on September 29, 2016. Henrys died in a car accident on Aug. 22, 2024. \n"She was a very loving mother," said Kovalchuk, who hasn’t spoken to Bedrick since the pandemic. "So that's why, when I found out what happened, it was such a big shock, because I knew how much she loved that boy."
\nIn January 2021, CPS received complaints of inadequate guardianship of Eli. Six weeks later, CPS determined that the allegations were unfounded and closed the case, state records show.
\nThe following October, there was another complaint of inadequate guardianship, but this one included a very serious and specific allegation: Bedrick and her boyfriend allegedly were selling methamphetamines in front of Eli and getting high on the drugs while he was in their care.
\nAgain, CPS determined the complaint was unfounded. Records of unfounded complaints are not publicly available.
\nThat same month, her driver’s license was suspended again, this time because of a lapse in insurance, according to state Department of Motor Vehicle records.
\nThe following year was particularly turbulent. Police stopped her seven times and ticketed her for unlicensed driving and speeding. In addition, police were called to her house 12 times to handle reports of disturbances, a domestic dispute, a suspicious person and an overdose, police records show.
\nWhen police were called to handle a landlord-tenant dispute on April 11, 2022, CPS got a complaint. The caller said Bedrick was using illegal drugs daily, became delusional and paranoid and left then-6-year-old Eli unsupervised and hungry. A CPS worker interviewed Eli, and he said he was eating. Bedrick said that a friend had been staying in her garage and that he was the one using illegal drugs. CPS closed the case "appropriately," according to the state review.
\nThe state review did note that Suffolk CPS incorrectly omitted that Bedrick had been in a domestic violence dispute.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/89d86513-c136-4fc9-8773-9b48aec2e953/DSC00048.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Middle Island Fire Department located at 31 Arnold Dr, Middle Island NY. \nAfter Bedrick walked into the local fire department, the state review found numerous failings in CPS’ handling of that incident, including caseworkers not contacting sources who reported that it was not safe for Bedrick to be discharged from the hospital. Also, caseworkers did not note the safety risks posed by the fact that Bedrick stopped taking her medication against doctors' advice and did not participate in mental health services.
\nBedrick "displayed erratic behavior during casework contacts," but they didn’t offer her services, the report said.
\nSTORYWIDGET: INCPS25_tearFD \nBy then, Bedrick was unemployed and her house was in foreclosure, according to records. She was stopped by police 10 times in 2023. In June alone, police stopped her four times. In one incident, the officer noted her son sitting in the back seat without a seat belt.
\nIn May 2023, CPS opened the last investigation against Bedrick. It included allegations of inadequate guardianship and physical abuse. According to the report, both Bedrick and Eli denied the use of physical discipline. The report does not specify if Eli was interviewed at home. The investigation was closed as unfounded in June 2023. The state review said the concerns about Bedrick’s mental health should have been reflected in the paperwork, but that it wouldn’t affect the result.
\nMelina A. Healey, an assistant professor and director of clinical programs at Touro Law School, reviewed the state report at Newsday’s request. She said she was reluctant to draw legal conclusions but said the OCFS review suggested there were weaknesses in CPS’ handling of Bedrick’s case.
\n"OCFS, the state agency overseeing child protective services, concluded that there were deficiencies in CPS’s prior investigations of the family. In response to reports of serious allegations of maltreatment, CPS must conduct thorough safety assessments, carefully gather and document information, and offer appropriate mental health and other services. OCFS is saying that didn’t happen in this case," she said in an email.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/af8c6ec0-8f48-4061-ba17-34467bd76256/LISSP240823a29385.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
New York State Police investigate an accident on the Eastbound Southern State Parkway east of Exit 42 Fifth Avenue at about 2:25 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. A reported wrong way driver struck multiple vehicles cauing at least one life threatening injury. The accident is under investigation. \nThe first few months of 2024 appeared chaotic for Bedrick. Police stopped her four times from January through March 2024 and ticketed her for driving with a suspended license. Meanwhile, the court issued 56 license suspensions — one for each ticket — for failure to answer summonses, records show.
\nThe process of clearing a license suspension is complicated and "not user-friendly," said Daniel Friedman, a criminal attorney who specializes in traffic cases.
\nShe continued driving.
\nOn the night of Aug. 21, Bedrick went out with Eli for food between 8:30 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eli fell asleep in the vehicle. She said she drove around so he would sleep because he had not slept in several days due to an unspecified medical diagnosis, the report states. A white van began to follow her. Fearful that it would force her off the road, she said she called 911. She said a dispatcher told her to pull over, but she said she was too afraid. She kept driving, according to the account she gave the authorities after the crash.
\nBedrick pulled over to sleep. When she woke up, she said she became disoriented. Cars were beeping at her because she was driving too slowly. Then a patrol car bumped her rear bumper, she said.
\nShe panicked, and her left leg became stiff. She was unable to take it off the gas pedal, she later told the authorities.
\nBedrick said she didn’t know she was driving the wrong way: "It was very dark, and the exits were confusing, even with the red wrong-way signs," according to the child fatality report.
\nAround 2:15 a.m., a deputy sheriff assigned to DWI enforcement spotted a 2022 Mitsubishi SUV driving west in the eastbound lanes of the parkway near Carleton Avenue in Islip and followed her, the report said.
\nAt one point, according to prosecutors, the officer was also driving the wrong way on the Southern State, trying to pull her to the shoulder. He had to stop because of oncoming traffic.
\nThe deputy sheriff then tried to drive the right way and pull up ahead of her, said Major Stephen Udice, commander of the New York State Police Troop L barracks in Farmingdale.
\nBut the deputy sheriff couldn’t get ahead of her. Bedrick sped the wrong way for several miles, hitting speeds of up to 100 mph and passing eight cars along the way, prosecutors said.
\nThen Bedrick’s car slammed into another car head-on. Two other cars crashed as a result. The impact launched her Mitsubishi’s engine into the woods. Everyone involved was taken to the hospital, Udice said.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/198b52bb-4d5a-4281-a246-0e4ddc13208f/cop3sda27724.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Police investigate an accident on the eastbound Southern State Parkway, east of exit 42, on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024. \nThe first two troopers on the scene found Bedrick standing outside her car. She said her son was in the back seat, the report said. The troopers pulled him out of the car and immediately began CPR. They worked feverishly on him and jumped into the ambulance when it arrived so that they could continue CPR, Udice said.
\n"They watched this boy's life disappear in front of their eyes," Udice told Newsday in an interview.
\nBedrick had watery eyes, slurred speech and impaired motor skills, authorities said. Asked where she was driving, she said, "I honestly don’t know." She admitted taking drugs, Ziram and methamphetamine, which she said were prescription medications. Authorities found a plastic zip-close bag with methamphetamine pills.
\nBedrick showed no emotion, according to the state review. She was making comments that made "no sense." At the hospital, she said, "Jeffrey Epstein was trying to kidnap me and (the subject child)."
\nEli was pronounced dead at 2:55 a.m.
\nWith Grant Parpan
","textAudio":null,"topElement":{"__typename":"Image","id":"contentid/7ccddffd-a176-4a97-ae38-78f478f09f84","width":2100,"height":1400,"title":"inCPS250309_photos","headline":"","baseUrl":"https://cdn.newsday.com/image-service/version/c:YjNhNjFhMzAtMTBjYy00:MTBhZGMwM2MtYWU4MC00/incps250309_photos.jpg","caption":"Kerri Bedrick is walked out of the Suffolk police department's Fourth Precinct in Smithtown on Aug. 23 following the fatal crash that killed her 9-year-old son.
\n","altTag":"","byline":"Joseph Sperber","organization":"","floatLeft":false,"floatRight":false,"imageSize":"","useFreeform":false}},{"__typename":"Article","id":"contentid/6cadc1ca-f5e4-460c-bfef-3e89c59df8dd","url":"https://www.newsday.com/long-island/crime/valva-grand-jury-thomas-valva-death-d2udg0mo","headline":"Thomas Valva case update: Grand jury recommends no criminal charges against CPS workers in boy's 2020 death","teaserTitle":"Grand jury recommends no criminal charges for CPS workers investigating abuse in Thomas Valva's death","body":"A special grand jury convened to investigate Suffolk County's Department of Social Services following the hypothermia death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva in 2020 recommends no criminal charges against Child Protective Services caseworkers investigating allegations of abuse by the child's father and his fiancee, a 75-page report released Thursday concluded.
\nThe caseworkers in charge of protecting Thomas Valva, who died after his NYPD officer father and his father's fiancee forced him to sleep in the garage of their Center Moriches home in freezing temperatures, shielded themselves from public review of their actions — and potential criminal charges — due to confidentiality laws that must be reformed, the grand jury impaneled by Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney found.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/0e930f52-c60c-4c7c-814f-8e11afda4d90/6T5A9719.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney announces the conclusion of a six-month special grand jury investigation involving Thomas Valva's death at a news conference at the Dennison building in Hauppauge on Thursday. \n“No one looking at this can come to any other conclusion other than CPS failed these boys, failed these boys miserable, and as a result Thomas died,” Tierney said at a news conference at his Hauppauge office Thursday.
\nThe grand jury report does not recommend criminal charges against the Child Protective Services caseworkers or supervisors assigned to investigate the case of Thomas Valva and his brother Anthony — who were both autistic — from the abuse they endured, which included beatings, starvation and verbal abuse.
\nInstead, the grand jury issued a number of recommendations, including amending a state law that shields unfounded CPS reports from grand juries and district attorneys, the report says.
\nThe report by the grand jury, which sat from Sept. 13 to March 15, does not name Thomas, instead referring to him as “Child A,” or his siblings or even those who were convicted of killing him. But the facts laid out in the report, including dates and previously reported abuse allegations, mirror those that occurred in the Valva case.
\nThomas' father, Michael Valva, and his fiancee, Angela Pollina, forced Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, to sleep overnight in their unheated garage. Michael Valva and Pollina were convicted of second-degree murder and child endangerment charges at separate trials. Both are serving sentences of 25 years to life in prison in Thomas' death and abuse of the two boys.
\nSTORYWIDGET: LIVALVA240405_widget \n“After [Thomas'] death, CPS employees could have obviated the injustice in this case by migrating the 10 unfounded reports and underlying investigative material into the subsequent indicated report relating to [his], which would have made those reports and material accessible to this grand jury,” the grand jury report dated March 12 said. “The failure of CPS to do so can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to shield their own inaction from public scrutiny.”
\nThe grand jury noted CPS, a division of the Department of Social Services, received more than 10 reports from mandated reporters alleging abuse against Thomas, but deemed those reports “unfounded,” which ultimately shielded CPS and its caseworkers from any potential criminal charges, following CPS determinations in 2018 against Thomas' biological mother, who lost custody of Thomas and his brothers before Thomas' death.
\nNone of the unfounded reports or the reports' underlying information were ever migrated into the “indicated case” — meaning a case in which CPS found enough evidence to support the claim that a child has been abused or neglected — against Michael Valva or Angela Pollina, a decision that was at the sole discretion of CPS personnel, the grand jury said.
\n“The absence of this information, which is essential to any effort to determine whether, or to what extent, CPS as an agency or individual CPS employees, failed in their duty to protect [Thomas], is due solely to the current confidentiality laws and rules governing access to unfounded CPS files,” the report says."These laws and rules, while intended to protect the privacy rights of citizens, have had the unintended consequence of shielding CPS and its employees from investigation into criminal culpability.”
\nSuffolk AME President Daniel C. Levler, who heads the union representing case workers, said the report “reaffirms our position from Day One-the CPS caseworkers in the Valva case performed their jobs in accordance with their training and within the legal guidelines set forth by Suffolk County's Social Services Department and New York State law.”
\nLevler's statement urged: “It's well past time for the media and others to stop trying to convict these caseworkers in the court of public opinion and to instead focus on the systemic failures highlighted in the District Attorney's report, which require immediate legislative action by our county and state lawmakers. AME has spent over seven years sounding the alarm about the dangers stemming from the shortage of caseworkers and the heavy caseloads caused by the previous administration's failure to address this problem.”
\nSuffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, in a statement, said he is “immediately” bringing in new leadership. The current five-year term for DSS Commissioner Frances Pierre, who ran the department when Thomas died, expires Tuesday.
\n“The death of Thomas Valva is an enduring stain on Suffolk County, and the grand jury report unveiled today by District Attorney Tierney underscores the failure of the prior administration’s policies and the leadership of Suffolk CPS to take real action that could have saved a child’s life and protected an untold number of others,” Romaine said. “We did not need a grand jury report to know that Suffolk County failed Thomas Valva.”
\nThe report said the grand jury was further “hampered” by state law and a subsequent court ruling that shields even law enforcement from access to CPS reports that were not “indicated” or substantiated.
\n“This has severely hampered this grand jury’s ability to investigate whether CPS caseworkers and other personnel engaged in willful misconduct or gross negligence in their investigation of those reports.”
\nDuring the six-month grand jury term, the district attorney's office sought a court order in Suffolk County Supreme Court to compel Suffolk’s Department of Social Services to “fully comply with those subpoenas by providing the underlying records relating to the unfounded reports.”
\nThe court sided with the Department of Social Services, saying the statute seals all records relating to unfounded reports — not just the reports themselves. Unfounded CPS records must remain on file for 10 years from the date of receipt, after which they are expunged, the grand jury report said.
\nThe court’s denial “hampered this grand jury’s ability to conduct a thorough investigation of the conduct of CPS personnel, not only in connection with [Thomas'] case, but in connection with other cases as well,” the grand jury said.
\n“If a CPS employee in an unfounded case were to have falsified CPS records by, for example, indicating in CONNECTIONS that they had made a field visit when, in fact, they had not, the current disclosure laws and rules for unfounded cases would prevent a criminal investigation and/or prosecution of that employee’s misconduct. Moreover, without access to unfounded files, it would be virtually impossible to prove gross negligence or willful misconduct by a CPS employee in an unfounded case,” the report said.
\nThree CPS employees who played key roles in the agency’s investigations into abuse allegations against Valva and Pollina were promoted after Thomas died, Newsday reported previously.
\nThe grand jury, which heard testimony from 27 witnesses and consulted 56 exhibits that consisted of thousands of pages, proposed a slew of legislative and administrative reforms, including:
\nThe governor's office said it would review the report.
\n“Gov. Hochul is committed to keeping children and families safe, and our heart breaks for the family who has been devastated by this horrific incident,” said Gordon Tepper, the governor's Long Island spokesperson.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/3a9baab2-6965-4a2c-a827-61b6b83e35ea/liVALVA220910_366740.jpg?f=3x2&w=400&q=0.3\")
Michael Valva, left, and Angela Pollina, right, were convicted of second-degree murder in the hypothermia death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva. \nThomas died on Jan. 17, 2020, after his father and his fiancee forced Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, to sleep overnight in their unheated garage when the temperature was 19 degrees.
\nTrial testimony showed Thomas’ teachers and school counselors — who are mandated by state law to report if they have reasonable suspicion of the abuse of any minor child — filed several reports with the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, alleging the children came to school bruised, bloodied, dirty, hungry and soaked in urine. Thomas once told a teacher he was sleeping in the garage, but a caseworker dismissed the notion, according to trial testimony.
\nIn 2022, a federal judge said “CPS did not step in to protect the children” and allowed the abuse to continue “with impunity” as part of a ruling in the $200 million civil case filed against Suffolk County and individual caseworkers by Thomas' mother, Justyna Zubko-Valva.
\nNewsday previously reported the state Office of Children and Family Services has refused to release its Child Fatality Review Report that is critical of Suffolk Child Protective Services. A Suffolk “program improvement plan” created in response to the state report said CPS was not always effectively documenting the history of its case, did not give enough emphasis to child-abuse hotline reports in its decision-making, did not coordinate enough with law enforcement and did not give enough priority to abuse reports from school employees.
\nA Suffolk legislative task force that examined the Valva case has been largely inactive since 2021. Newsday has reported that a planned review by the state court system on how judges handled custody and visitation issues before Thomas died never happened.
\nThe grand jury report was also critical of the Office of Children and Family Services, saying it relied solely on the factual representations made by Child Protective Services when monitoring the agency. Office of Children and Family Services should not just meet with the caseworkers assigned to cases that the office is monitoring, it should also conduct independent investigations, the report said. OCFS should also facilitate better communication regarding trainee evaluations, the report said.
\nAfter Thomas' death, the report said, the Office of Children and Family Services placed Suffolk's CPS on “heightened monitoring” after completing a “comprehensive review of the casework practice of Suffolk County's CPS regarding, not only the previous investigations related to [Thomas Valva] and that child's family, but also a sampling of other CPS investigations as well as foster care and preventive cases.”
\nOffice of Children and Family Services, the report said, noticed “a number of practice concerns” regarding the adequacy of supervision, CPS history reviews and safety assessments and plans. The heightened monitoring included monthly meetings with Suffolk CPS, instead of quarterly, and randomly selecting and reviewing at least five active cases every month. But it ended on March 17, 2022, after the Office of Children and Family Services said Suffolk CPS had made “substantial progress” in correcting its deficiencies.
\nThe grand jury report was also critical of the administration of former Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, who oversaw the passage of the 2020 CPS Transformation Act, which passed six months after Thomas' death. Before leaving office, Bellone said the county had met all the act's mandates but acknowledged the county had failed to keep CPS caseload levels below its reform goal of 12 cases or fewer per caseworker.
\nThe report affirmed those findings, and said that CPS has almost achieved its goal due to a temporary rule change set to expire in December that waives the requirement for new caseworker applicants to take the Civil Service exam.
\nAnd while the Department of Social Services is currently budgeted for the number of investigative caseworkers deemed necessary, it is “not sufficiently budgeted” for the office assistants that handle paperwork and make it possible for caseworkers to investigate in the field, the report said.
\n“Requests for more money for support staff have regularly been made to the previous administration in Suffolk County, but to no avail,” the report said.
\nThe Suffolk County Department of Social Services also needs to conduct yearly employee evaluations, provide training for evaluators, revamp its disciplinary process to do away with the current process, which allows one person to make all disciplinary decisions, the report said.
\nCPS employees should also do training sessions on how to investigate abuse cases with members of the police department and district attorney's office, the report said.
\nPolice department detectives in the Special Victims Unit, who currently only investigate cases involving children under the age of 13, should also investigate cases involving children between the ages of 13 and 17, the report said.
\nFormer Suffolk Social Services Commissioner Gregory Blass, who also served as a family court judge, called the grand jury report “spot on,” keying in on reforms that would address concerns over caseloads and a lack of support staff. Blass said when working through county budgets, support staff was often “the first place to cut.”
\n“The lowest priority when the pencils are sharpened is to just drop the support staff when feasible, and that is as much a factor and a burden in a caseworker’s caseload,” said Blass, who worked for former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy and the Bellone administration. “It's not just the cases themselves, but the ability to keep up with something as simple as returning a phone call.”
\nMental health support for caseworkers, better training and performance evaluations are all areas Blass agreed should be prioritized.
\nThomas' mother, who long maintained that various officials ignored the plight of her sons, rejected a $3 million offer by the county to settle her pending lawsuit last year.
\nAttorney Tom Bosworth, who represent the child’s mother, said Thomas' death was preventable.
\n“CPS was provided countless opportunities to intervene in the face of clear danger to the child at the hands of his father and the father’s fiancee,” he said in a statement. “To say that CPS failed in this regard would be a gross understatement. They consciously ignored red flag after red flag, knowing that children were starving, abused, and made to sleep in a freezing basement.”
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\nTheir parents insisted both had been vaccinated. State records appeared to confirm it.
\nBut blood tests told a different story. Neither child had immunity to highly contagious diseases including mumps, measles and hepatitis B.
\nTheir parents had refused shots by their children's regular pediatricians and instead took their kids to the same Amityville provider, nurse practitioner Julie DeVuono, to obtain immunization records.
\nDoctors filed urgent complaints with state regulators, warning of apparent child vaccination fraud. One called it \"a huge public health concern\" and wrote, \"She must be investigated, license revoked, and punished to the fullest extent of the law.\"
\nThose warnings had little impact.
\nFor the next three years, DeVuono continued to operate Wild Child Pediatrics, claiming to administer thousands of childhood vaccinations, even as questions about her pediatric records mounted — and even as authorities later uncovered a separate $1.2-million scheme involving fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards.
\nA Newsday investigation found that despite early warnings of an alleged fraudulent pediatric vaccine operation that experts say would be among the largest in recent U.S. history, state regulators failed to stop DeVuono's practice. The investigation also found the Suffolk district attorney chose to not criminally investigate those allegations, despite urging by health officials.
STORYWIDGET: INVAX260419_complainttear \nThe state Education Department has the power to suspend or revoke nurses' licenses. But 18 months after the doctors' complaints, it fined her $500 — for incomplete record keeping in seven cases — while allowing her to keep submitting immunization records for kids to attend school.
\nDeVuono only stopped practicing when Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney's office secured her conviction in the COVID-19 case, which authorities stumbled upon when DeVuono herself called police to her office following a client dispute over money.
\nThrough a public records request filed with the Suffolk District Attorney's Office in 2024, Newsday in December obtained thousands of pages of records, undercover video files and audio recordings that provide the most complete accounting of DeVuono’s case. She surrendered her New York nursing licenses and closed her Wild Child pediatric practice as part of a 2023 plea agreement in which she admitted forging thousands of COVID-19 vaccine cards. She also pleaded guilty to submitting an oxycodone prescription for herself in the name of her brother. A judge sentenced her to community service.
\nThe case put DeVuono at the forefront of the antivaccination movement on Long Island, a group skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and that believes vaccine requirements are an infringement on personal rights. The movement, which started on the political fringes of both parties, has gained new prominence with the rise of President Donald Trump, who appointed avowed vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.
\nToday, the extent of DeVuono's alleged fraud is still not known. State investigators have invalidated an unknown number of children's proofs of immunization and are pursuing a noncriminal administrative case against DeVuono, accusing her of falsifying more than 1,500 vaccine records, which could result in millions of dollars in fines.
\nFamilies also provided Long Island school districts with DeVuono-stamped vaccine records after her arrest, court records show, including in the weeks before she agreed to surrender her nursing licenses in the 2023 COVID fraud plea deal with Suffolk prosecutors.
\nAlthough state regulators lauded the removal of her licenses, they thought Suffolk prosecutors should have done more. In a January 2024 email, the state Health Department’s director of investigations criticized prosecutors for not looking into their allegations that DeVuono also committed childhood vaccine fraud.
STORYWIDGET: INVAX_pq1 \nNoting they had found evidence that her alleged fraud began in 2019 — and that they had raised concerns early in its COVID criminal case — the Health Department's investigations director, Joseph Giovannetti, wrote: \"It’s our understanding ... your office never investigated it.\"
\nA spokeswoman for Tierney’s office confirmed to Newsday they did not launch an investigation into those allegations because prosecutors believed they did not receive enough evidence to bring criminal charges.
\nIn an interview, Tierney said prosecuting pediatric vaccine fraud beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult. He questioned why the state allowed DeVuono to continue practicing even though state regulators received allegations of pediatric vaccine fraud years before his office got involved.
\n\"If it was so cut and dry, why was it left for us to physically take her license from her at the time of sentencing?\" Tierney said in response to the state's criticism.
\nEducation Department spokeswoman Rachel Connors said in a statement that even when there is a plea deal, the Board of Regents, which oversees the department, ultimately decides whether to accept a license surrender and stop someone from practicing. The board formally took her license in December 2023, three months after her plea.
\nHealth Department spokeswoman Erin Clary said in a statement: \"The Department made considerable, documented efforts to convince the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to include the pediatric vaccination fraud in its prosecution, and it declined.\"
\nThe health and education departments cannot directly file criminal charges, but they can refer cases to the state attorney general's office. Asked why the office did not refer DeVuono's case, Clary said, \"DeVuono had already been successfully prosecuted by the Suffolk County DA’s Office, the same office that led the investigation from the beginning and holds key evidence to the case.\"
\nDeVuono, who now lives in Pennsylvania, could not be reached for comment. Her attorney in the COVID-19 case, Jason Russo, has said DeVuono told him she never falsified pediatric vaccination records.
\nThe Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement this month that DeVuono doesn’t have a Pennsylvania nursing license and hasn’t applied for one.
\nThe Education Department had previously disciplined DeVuono because pediatric immunization records she submitted for seven children in 2019 lacked basic information such as dosage amounts, the manufacturer and expiration dates.
\nTo close that case, DeVuono accepted a \"censure and reprimand,\" paid a $500 fine and did not contest the charges. The 2021 settlement agreement makes no reference to vaccine fraud or the complaints filed by doctors in 2020.
STORYWIDGET: INVAX260329_violationsstatement \nConnors, the Education Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the case, citing confidentiality.
\nThe Health Department said it referred complaints about DeVuono to the Education Department for potential discipline because it did not yet have its own investigations bureau until the fall of 2023, several months before it filed administrative charges against DeVuono alleging fraud.
\nVaccine and public health experts found fault with both the state regulators, for failing to stop DeVuono sooner, and with the district attorney's office, for not pursuing a criminal investigation into alleged pediatric vaccine fraud.
\nBrian Dean Abramson, a vaccine law professor at University of Houston Law Center, said two physicians separately accusing a nurse of falsifying immunization records should immediately raise red flags and be viewed as credible.
\n\"It would be very surprising if that sort of accusation were to arise and there was nothing actually supporting it,\" he said.
\nAfter receiving the complaints, the Education Department should have at least tried to stop DeVuono from continuing to submit vaccination records until it could investigate further, he said.
\nState law allows the department to temporarily bar a provider from practicing before the resolution of a case if \"the public health, safety or welfare imperatively requires emergency action.\"
\nAbramson said vaccine fraud fits that description.
\n\"Pediatric vaccine fraud is one of the most pernicious crimes that can occur in our society, because we vaccinate children to protect them from diseases that are known to be deadly,\" he said.
\nAbramson also said that the allegations of pediatric fraud were \"ripe for an investigation\" by Tierney’s office.
STORYWIDGET: INVAX260329_maptable \nNew charges would have discouraged other unscrupulous providers from falsifying records, Abramson said. \"It's rare for it to be caught and rarer still to be prosecuted criminally,\" he added.
\nEven if a district attorney’s office has the same evidence as a state agency, prosecutors could decline to file criminal charges because its burden of proof is much higher than administrative cases, said John Quinn, a professor at the Touro University law school in Central Islip.
\nIn addition, taking away a defendant’s ability to practice medicine \"might be enough to satisfy [his] goals,\" said Clayton Masterman, a University at Buffalo law school professor.
\nThe state senator who sponsored a 2019 bill that ended religious and other nonmedical exemptions for school vaccination requirements following major measles outbreaks said getting DeVuono to surrender her licenses wasn't enough.
\n\"The book should be thrown at anyone who is so reckless as to intentionally fabricate a record that is meant to protect the public health,\" said Brad Hoylman-Sigal, now the Manhattan borough president. \"There are literally lives that could be endangered as a result.\"
\nFalsification of pediatric vaccine cards affects more than unvaccinated children, said Dr. Jennifer Duchon, a Manhattan-based pediatric epidemiologist for the Mount Sinai Health System.
\nChildren — especially those with weakened immune systems and babies too young to get vaccines — can get severely ill from vaccine-preventable diseases, she said.
\nState records show DeVuono only began administering childhood vaccines after the state ended nonmedical exemptions in 2019.
\nShe reported giving children more than 7,500 vaccines over a two-year span — after 17 years of having never reported administering a vaccine.
\n![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/b8c8296c-71e3-4017-93fd-b0a7add2e86a/Cash277907.jpg?w=400&q=0.3\")
Prosecutors said DeVuono made more than $1.2 million by selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards. \nDeVuono might still be practicing today if she didn’t call the police in October 2021 to remove an \"unruly\" customer from her office, tipping the authorities off to her lucrative COVID-19 vaccine card scheme.
\nThe customer, identified in records as Thomas Laviano, of Sag Harbor, told police he had paid DeVuono $200 a month earlier to receive the COVID card with the first dose listed, without ever receiving the shot. He didn’t expect to be asked to pay another $220 when he returned for the second appointment in October 2021.
\nThat led to an argument that got so heated DeVuono called police to have him removed from her office.
\nWhen an Amityville village officer arrived, records show, DeVuono explained that she had been administering COVID-19 shots \"along with a holistic way that rids the body of the vaccine\" and charges patients $220 each time. According to the police report, Laviano would not pay, and they argued.
\nIn a telephone interview with Newsday in March, Laviano, 71, said, \"she charged me twice, and I was arguing with her that it's not right, and then she called a cop on me because I got a little agitated.\"
\nBut Laviano also expressed sympathy for DeVuono, saying, \"she helped a lot of people\" by allowing them to receive COVID-19 cards without getting the vaccine at a time when many workplaces and indoor events required proof of vaccination.
\n\"My hat’s off to her,\" he said.
\nBefore Amityville police left the scene in 2021, records show, an anonymous bystander told the officer that people often line up outside DeVuono’s office, and one of them told her they were there getting fake vaccine cards.
\nAmityville police referred the case that day to Suffolk police and the district attorney's office, records show.
![](\"/onecms/polopoly_fs/atex.onecms.Widget-pCustomResourceArea!/img/video-x-generic.png\")
\nA day later, Laviano provided a statement to a Suffolk detective detailing how he scored an appointment with DeVuono.
\nHaving learned of DeVuono’s sham vaccine-card operation from a friend, he said he expressed his interest by texting her with the code word: \"Smilari 62.\" The records do not explain the significance of the code word.
\nWeeks later, DeVuono told a client in her office, \"We found out that there is a file with our name on it on the desk of the Suffolk County D.A., and they are planning to send someone out undercover.\" She said she thought about stopping, but decided to limit her practice to \"known people.\"
\nThat exchange is caught on video — by an undercover police detective sitting a few feet away in the waiting room.
\nSuffolk police arrested DeVuono in January 2022 for the COVID vaccine fraud, three months after her 911 phone call.
\nIt was a Thursday night. Three days later, on a Sunday, state health investigators emailed Suffolk prosecutors \"flagging the issue of non-covid vaccination fraud.\"
\nAnother 20 months passed before DeVuono agreed to the plea deal with Tierney’s office. Giovannetti said in a statement provided by a Health Department spokeswoman that the department's investigations bureau \"actively encouraged the DA’s office to include [pediatric vaccination fraud] in its charges.\"
\nThose charges never came.
\n\"We obtained no legally competent evidence with which to initiate an investigation,\" Tierney spokeswoman Tania Lopez said in a statement.
![](\"/image-service/alias/contentid/c5228300-ef61-4e35-b1ad-39a07b2488cd/JTC182223754394249.jpg?w=400&q=0.3\")
DeVuono with her attorney Jason Russo in 2023. \nAuthorities also alleged DeVuono prescribed thousands of oxycodone pills at Long Island pharmacies between 2016 and 2021 in the names of two family members who lived in different states — unbeknownst to them, they said — and her grandmother, who died in 1980. Tierney's office said in a statement that there was no evidence she was selling oxycodone. DeVuono was undergoing substance abuse treatment at the time of her sentencing, court records show.
\nIn December 2023, three months after DeVuono pleaded guilty, Newsday reported the Health Department was investigating her for pediatric vaccine fraud. In that story, the Suffolk district attorney’s office said, \"There was no evidence that anyone received non-COVID fake immunization cards\" from Wild Child.
\nThat statement shocked state health investigators.
\nIts director of investigations, Giovannetti, who also is an attorney, wrote in an email to prosecutors, \"The statement implies that the question was investigated by your office and a determination made.\"
\nIn an interview, Tierney said his office’s 2023 statement to Newsday that they had \"no evidence\" of non-COVID vaccine fraud referred to \"evidence that we could use\" in a criminal case.
\nThe issue emerged at the start of DeVuono's June 2024 sentencing hearing when Suffolk state Supreme Court Justice John Collins said he received a presentencing letter from the Health Department.
\nNoting that the letter alleged DeVuono falsified 226 childhood vaccine records for \"at least\" 26 children in 2020 and 2021, the judge asked prosecutors if they \"intend to undertake an investigation of those allegations,\" according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by Newsday.
\nAssistant District Attorney James Bartens said, \"Of course we will look at whatever evidence they have come about, but as of this point we are not privy to their investigation as far as what evidence they have procured.\"
\nThe judge stopped him midsentence, and asked, \"Did you get the same paperwork I got?\" Bartens initially said he didn't think so — \"Come on,\" the judge said, incredulously — before Bartens found it on his desk.
\nThen he said: \"This was not a complete shock and we have been aware of the Department of Health’s investigation into this matter.\"
\nTierney told Newsday in the recent interview he remains open to prosecuting DeVuono for pediatric vaccine fraud — if he has enough evidence. But, he said, prosecutors would need an informant or other witness who was in the room with DeVuono and the child patient as she was committing a fraudulent act, such as administering a \"false vaccine.\"
\nAbramson, the vaccine law professor, said although someone who witnessed DeVuono committing a fraudulent act in the room with patients would strengthen a case, it wouldn’t be necessary for a successful prosecution.
\nUnder the plea deal Tierney's office reached with DeVuono in the COVID-19 case, she surrendered her nursing licenses, was required to forfeit more than $1.25 million and promised to serve 840 hours of community service, in lieu of six months' jail time.
\nGiovannetti, who the health department said was not available for an interview, said in the statement that although the agency was unsuccessful in its efforts to convince Tierney to file pediatric vaccination fraud charges, \"There is no doubt that the DA’s Office protected public health and safety in Long Island by ensuring that Julie DeVuono will never practice medicine in New York again.\"
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