Angela Pollina's murder trial resumes Monday in Thomas Valva's death

Sgt. Norberto Flores, a Suffolk County Police Department homicide detective and the lead investigator in Thomas Valva's death, will be back on the stand to be questioned by prosecutors when the second week of Angela Pollina’s trial resumes Monday in Riverhead.

Pollina, a mother of three girls who was the ex-fiancee of Thomas' father, ex-NYPD officer Michael Valva, is charged with second-degree murder in Thomas’ hypothermia death, and the alleged abuse of Thomas and his older brother, Anthony, who was 10 years old when Thomas died on Jan. 17, 2020.

Prosecutors have called the house where Thomas and Anthony lived on Bittersweet Lane in Center Moriches the “house of horrors." Jury selection in the case began on Feb. 22 in Suffolk County Court. The trial is expected to last about a month.

Jurors heard testimony from the East Moriches Elementary School principal, teachers and a school psychiatrist late last week before the weekend break.

East Moriches Elementary School psychologist Renee Emin testified Friday that Thomas told a Child Protective Services worker in a 2019 meeting with the 8-year-old that he and Anthony were forced to sleep in an unheated garage and ordered to go to the bathroom in the backyard. 

“He said it directly to Melissa Estrada, investigator of CPS,” Emin testified. “Thomas Valva was so brave that day because he said everything he needed to say … He said it to the person who needed to hear it,” Emin said.

Thomas died eight months later after his father, Michael Valva, and Pollina, Valva’s fiancee, allegedly forced him to sleep in the unheated garage overnight in frigid temperatures, according to Suffolk prosecutors.

Pollina, 45, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and child endangerment charges in Thomas’ death, and the alleged abuse of Thomas and Anthony.

A Suffolk spokeswoman confirmed Friday that Estrada remains employed by CPS. 

Valva, 43, was convicted of second-degree murder last year in Thomas’ death and is serving 25 years to life at an upstate prison near the Canadian border.

Prosecutors have said the pair acted in concert in connection with Thomas’ death — forcing the boys to sleep in the garage in subfreezing temperatures and denying them food — and Pollina showed a depraved indifference to whether Thomas lived or died.

Pollina’s attorney, Matthew Tuohy, has conceded that his client was cruel to the boys, but he has argued that it was Valva who killed Thomas by hosing him off with cold water from an outside spigot on a cold winter morning after forcing the boy to spend the night in the garage.

Prosecutors told the jury during opening statements last Monday that Pollina correctly identified Thomas as “hypothermic” on the morning he died, but did nothing to aid him. 

Emin, who worked with both Thomas and Anthony during their time at the school from about 2017 to the beginning of 2020, testified that boys came to school looking “emaciated” and “unkempt.”

Prosecutors said Pollina and Valva withheld food from the boys and witnesses testified last week that the boys came to school with injuries, including bruises and cuts. Teachers also testified that Thomas and Anthony frequently came to school in urine-soaked clothes.

Edward Schneyer, the principal of the East Moriches Elementary School, testified Thursday that he and the teachers decided to “flood” the local CPS hotline to raise alarms about conditions at the Bittersweet Lane home. 

But Thomas and Anthony were never removed from the Valva-Pollina home, they testified.

During his testimony, Schneyer told the court that Pollina “demanded” that Anthony remove a sweatshirt lent to him by a teacher in the fall of 2019, when she forced the boys to sleep on a bare concrete floor in the garage. 

“They’re used to being cold,” Schneyer said Pollina told school officials.