Transcript of prosecutor at Michael Valva, Angela Pollina arraignments

WARNING: This transcript contains graphic descriptions of alleged child abuse.

Following is a transcript of the presentation to the judge from Suffolk Assistant District Attorney Kerriann Kelly, bureau chief of the Homicide Bureau, at the arraignments of Angela Pollina and Michael Valva Thursday in Riverhead.

Angela Pollina arraignment 

It is noteworthy that this defendant demanded that Thomas and Anthony Valva ... call her ‘Mommy.’

She screamed and yelled at them as if they were her own children. She attended school events holding herself out as the stepmother of Thomas and Anthony. As such, she owed a duty of care to those boys to protect them from physical harm and to provide them with adequate medical treatment.

Thomas and Anthony were treated miserably. She treated them in a manner that was nothing short of cruel, callous, wanton and evil.

While living in this defendant’s home, the boys were undernourished. They were literally begging for food at school, eating crumbs off of the table, eating out of the garbage cans, going under bleachers in the gym to try to find food. The teachers at the school brought extra food to the school for the children. The teachers repeatedly asked both this defendant and Michael Valva to bring additional food to the school because the children were so hungry. They never did.

While living in this defendant’s home, the boys were forced to sleep, in subfreezing temperatures, on the cement slab in the garage without sheets, pillows, blankets or mattresses. While living with this defendant, the boys went to school with ice-cold hands — cold to the touch — and their cheeks were cold to the touch and they were forbidden to see the school nurse, who would have provided them with additional clothing.

While living with this defendant, the boys eventually had to wear Pull-Ups to school. That began the second year that they were in the school district. It wasn’t happening initially when they were living with this defendant. But by the second year of living in that school district, those boys had to wear Pull-Ups to school as they soiled themselves in fear of her and their father, Michael Valva.

While living in this defendant’s home, the children were locked in their bedrooms and denied access to the bathroom. When they soiled themselves, they were punished by being forced to sleep in the garage.

While living in this defendant’s home, the children were physically assaulted, including an occasion where this defendant first threw and dragged Thomas down the stairs. Notably, two nights before Thomas died, he found himself banished to the garage once again. Nest video throughout the home, which was placed there by this defendant and Michael Valva, showed Thomas shaking in the freezing cold air and clearly exhibiting signs that he needs to use the bathroom in 19-degree weather. Angela showed Thomas and Anthony no compassion or kindness. Instead, she took a clip of the freezing children from the Nest video and sent it to Michael Valva, who was at work at the time. It was timestamped Jan. 15, 2020, at 10:42 p.m. And then there was an exchange of text messages between this defendant and Michael Valva.

Angela Pollina: I’m going to sleep. I tried calling you to see what you’re doing with Thomas in the morning. If you meant for real he’s not going to school, I need to leave here the second the bus comes.

Michael Valva: I have zero clothing for him. [Expletive] the piece of [expletive] Thomas. He’s not going anywhere.

Valva, 10 minutes later: Gee, seems like he has to go. If only he had a bathroom.

And a little while later, this defendant: Seriously, if only he had a bathroom.

At 1:06 a.m., now the early morning hours of Jan. 16, 2020, Angela downloads video of the boys in the garage in the freezing cold. This was just a day and a half before Thomas died of hypothermia.

Your honor, we have evidence that this defendant knew what hypothermia is. Hypothermia occurs when you are left in the cold for a prolonged period of time. It is a prolonged exposure to cold that causes a low body temperature that slows brain activity, and eventually causes the body’s organs to shut down, which is what happened to 8-year-old Thomas Valva at the hands of this defendant and her co-defendant Michael Valva.

This defendant did nothing to help Thomas Valva. She only hurt him physically and psychologically. 

When the EMTs arrived at their home in the early morning of January 17 of 2020, the morning of this 8-year-old child’s death, this defendant stood in the bathroom fixing her hair as Thomas’ ice-cold lifeless body lay on the floor. And she said: ‘You’re leaving now for the hospital. I’ll be there a little later.’ It took her about 45 minutes before she arrived at the hospital.

The evidence of this defendant’s depravity and failure to perceive the grave risk of serious physical injury or death that she caused Thomas Valva is overwhelming. Accordingly, and inasmuch as she faces the rest of her life in jail for what she has done, I respectfully request that this defendant be remanded at this time.

Michael Valva arraignment
 

This defendant was a New York City police officer at the time that he killed his son. As a police officer, he took an oath to serve and protect the citizens of New York City at large. However, as a parent to Thomas, as well as to Anthony, he had a duty to protect his children from physical harm and provide them with adequate medical treatment.

The evidence in this case will show the defendant failed Thomas and Anthony miserably, instead treating them in a manner that was nothing short of cruel, callous, wanton and evil.

Thomas was and Anthony is autistic but high-functioning. As described by employees of the school district they were in at the time of Thomas’ death, they were sweet and loving children.

Unfortunately, the defendant did not see his children in the same light. The defendant gained full custody of the boys on or about September 2017 over the strenuous objection of their biological mother. Almost immediately upon the start of the school year in 2017 and throughout the time the boys spent in the East Moriches school district, the boys presenting at school hungry, having been deprived of breakfast as a punishment if they failed to use their words or to call Angela, this defendant’s girlfriend/fiancee, ‘Mommy.’ The children took to eating crumbs off tables, pulling uneaten food out of the garbage and taking food from other children. For children who should have been gaining weight as they grew taller, in one year’s time, Anthony lost 20 pounds. And Thomas gained only one.

The boys were unbearably thin and cried if denied food. The defendant and his co-defendant, his girlfriend Angela Pollina, were asked to send in more food for these growing boys but they never did.

And the boys were weighed by the school district and that is how we know the boys were not thriving as they should have been.

The defendant and Angela not only deprived these boys of food as punishment, they made them sleep on a concrete slab floor in the garage of their home without a mattress, without sheets, without blankets and without even adequate clothing to try and keep them warm.

The children were sent off to school freezing cold. Their hands and cheeks were bright red and icy cold to the touch, confirmed by teachers from the East Moriches school district.

Anthony would insist on keeping his jacket on in what was described as a very warm classroom and even sitting in the sun in his classroom did not do anything to prevent his coldness. Thomas cried and protested against going out for recess because he did not want to be even colder if he went outside.

School employees would provide extra clothing for the boys, an act of kindness that was forbidden by his father, Michael Valva, and the co-defendant, Angela Pollina, and had to be done secretly so as to avoid any further punishment of the boys. By their second year in the school district, both boys were wearing Pull-Ups to school. They often came to school so soiled that school employees could smell urine and feces about their bodies. Thomas came to school so soiled one day that the urine was swishing in his sneakers. They would wait for extended periods of time for this defendant or Angela to bring clean clothes up to the school.

Anthony and Thomas were likely subjected to physical punishment. They were slapped and punched and carried by the wrist with their feet not touching the floor. Thomas was thrown and dragged down a flight of stairs. The boys would arrive at school with scratches, bruises and cuts. And Thomas in particular with a hand mark on his bottom, which he indicated to school officials was inflicted by his father, this defendant Michael Valva.

In the early fall of 2019, Thomas had a bump, a bruise and hair pulled from his head at the root. In mid November of 2019, both Anthony and Thomas came to school with bruises all over their faces and varying explanations from the children and their father, this defendant, as to how they were sustained.

Thomas and Anthony were further described at this time as fragile and pale. In the beginning, the boys did report who physically hurt them, deprived them of food and use of the bathroom and made them sleep in the garage. Eventually, though, they were coached to make up stories as to how they were hurt and what their living conditions were. Anthony repeatedly stated to detectives once these defendants were placed under arrest: ‘He sleeps in his bed and he stays in his room. He sleeps in his bed and he stays in his room. He sleeps in his bed and stays in his room.’

On the last day of his life, Thomas’ father, this defendant, called 911, claiming that Thomas had fallen on the driveway while waiting for the school bus. He subsequently told an EMT that Thomas ran into a door frame. The defendant changed that story a few times depending on who he spoke to that morning. But the bottom line was, he lied in an effort to protect himself and Angela from discovery of the house of horrors that Thomas and Anthony lived in and that Thomas sadly died in.

Nest cameras in nearly every room of the house were in part the defendant and Angela’s undoing. Suffolk County Police Department’s EIS would ultimately download the video and audio from those Nest cameras — even though as they did so, a simultaneous effort was made to delete the video and the audio. And the password that Angela had previously provided to police was changed. Fortunately, enough was captured by police to document the abuse Thomas and Anthony were subjected to, as I have just outlined for you, your honor.

The video includes the defendant beating one of his children with a closed fist while screaming at him. The two boys sitting Indian-style on the cement garage floor in the dark. The two boys standing at attention in the garage. Thomas begging to be let out of his room to use the bathroom. Two nights before Thomas’ death, the two boys sleeping on the garage floor, in what appeared to be nothing more than pajamas. Thomas shivering and shaking and holding himself because he needed to use the bathroom, looking into the Nest camera with pleading eyes for someone to help him.

It was 19 degrees that night, according to the National Weather Service. And your honor, the Nest camera in that garage was labeled the kids’ room.

And that video that I just discussed is the video that was the subject of the exchange of text messages that very same night while this defendant was employed as a New York City police officer and went off to work that night and Angela saw fit to send him videos of the children freezing in the garage.

Your honor, Thomas was dead as a result of hypothermia two mornings later. Upon his arrival at the hospital, he had an internal temperature of 76.1. According to the medical examiner, that temperature is consistent with the fourth and most life-threatening stage of hypothermia, a condition caused by long exposure to cold, causing a low body temperature that slows brain activity and eventually causes the body’s organs to shut down, just as they did for Thomas Valva.

Audio captured from the morning Thomas died, Jan. 17, 2020, further demonstrates this defendant’s depravity and the strength of the people’s case. You can hear Angela and this defendant in the kitchen and the garage door repeatedly opened and closed. Thomas was in the garage again and could not stand up. And again, he had an accident. This defendant was heard yelling: ‘[Expletive] moron. I told him to stand up. Wash yourself. What does he do? He head dives into the [expletive] concrete.’

One of the other children asked why Thomas couldn’t stand up. Then a child was heard saying that Thomas can’t even walk. Angela explained that Thomas is hypothermic, saying that is what happens when you’re freezing and being washed with cold water when it’s freezing outside. This defendant then told Angela that Thomas face-planted twice in the garage. Red stains in the garage that are still to be tested by the lab and injuries to Thomas’ face are consistent with that statement. There are no similar red stains on the driveway or on any door frame of the house. After the other children got on the bus, this defendant said: ‘This stupid [expletive] [expletive] fell head first into the concrete twice. He’s got two gigantic lumps on his head.’

Angela then asked why he fell. This defendant then replied: ‘Cuz he was cold. Boo-[expletive]-hoo. Now he’s a bloody [expletive] mess.’

Angela expresses no concern other than the defendant not yell so loud so that neighbors can’t hear.

It is clear that, this defendant’s lies notwithstanding, Thomas never made it out of that garage that morning. When the police and the EMTs arrived at the house, after the defendant finally called 911, Thomas was icy cold to the touch and not breathing. He was naked, except for a pair of sweatpants pulled down below his knees.

He was never able to be revived and was ultimately pronounced at the hospital and an EMT who arrived at the scene indicated there were no blankets. There was no covering whatsoever on that child. When asked if he needed anything at the hospital after his son was ultimately pronounced, the defendant replied: ‘I’ve been through more stressful things than this.’

Your honor, ignoring warnings about his son’s physical condition, subjecting him to corporal punishment, punishing him in the most inhumane of ways: The evidence of this defendant’s depravity is overwhelming.